The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts
by Howlin the Werewolf
Summary: This story follows the continuing travels of the Iron Sole Alchemist. After arriving through the Veil of Death in the Department of Mysteries, he and his traveling companions learn about the wonders and horrors of the wizarding world. Dumbledore takes them under his protection by enrolling them in Hogwarts. But an alchemist isn't the same thing as a wizard.
1. Chapter 1: Sorting Out the Basics

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 1) Sorting Out the Basics  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Note:  
This story is an immediate sequel to The Iron Sole Alchemist. That story introduces characters, events, and concepts. You may not understand everything if you have not read the previous story.  
Additionally, unlike the previous story, where pains were taken to avoid stepping on the toes of the canon, events will diverge from the original canon ones in the new universe due to the actions of the characters from another world.

* * *

Sloth and I surveyed our surroundings. We'd arrived in a circular, stone room. There was a door on one side leading out. The room itself was maintained, with no signs of dust or other abandonment. Despite the room's spartan and dreary appearance, the air smelled fresh, not stale.

"The archway we saw from the other side looks stable," I said, looking over the veiled passageway we'd used to enter this world.

Sloth set her bag down and walked with Loki to the opposite side of the room. She waved her hand through one of the stone benches as though it weren't really there and reported, "Looks like our powers are working normally."

Sloth went back to retrieve her bag. Loki turned his head toward the door and let out a warning bark. A pair of figures dressed in long, black robes stepped through the door, noticed our presence, and each drew a long, thin rod from a holster at their hips and pointed them at Sloth and I like weapons.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" demanded one of the robed men, fearfully.

"My name is Greed. This is Sloth and Loki," I said, with my open palms facing the men and slow, deliberate gestures. "We're peaceful explorers."

"How did you get in here?" asked the other robed figure, with more than a hint of accusation in his voice.

Loki didn't like that tone, and growled at the men. The dog's hair stood on end and blue light began to emanate from the alchemy arrays tattooed beneath his fur.

Whirling in an instant, the first man to speak, thrust his weapon towards Loki and shouted, "Stupefy!" A bolt of red light lanced out from the rod in his hand and impacted my dog with obvious force. Loki let out a yelp of pain, then fell motionless to the floor, the alchemic light he had begun to emit falling dark.

Sloth was moving the instant Loki fell, sprinting in a zigzag pattern toward the man who'd fired. He couldn't aim at her properly, so she was able to close the distance and punch the man hard enough to send him backward into a wall, then fall unconscious over a bench.

While Sloth went on the offensive, I raised my left arm towards our attackers and activated a transmutation circle embroidered on a wristband. A glowing blue disk sprang up between me and the robed figure as I called out, "Loki?!" I breathed a sign of relief when I saw the animal was still breathing.

"Stupefy!" yelled the remaining man, and his bolt of red light impacted against the disk of solidified air being held in place by my alchemy. He didn't miss a step, spinning to point the weapon at Sloth instead, who's unpredictable motion hadn't yet resumed after her last attack. "Stupefy!" he yelled again, and Sloth crumpled unconscious from the hit.

I stomped my right foot and a stone hand emerged from the floor beneath my opponent, accompanied by sparks of alchemic light. It reached up to pin the man, but before its grip could close, he again aimed his weapon at me and shouted "Stupefy!" He'd aimed low, and rather than impacting against my shield, the red bolt went under it, impacting on the foot I'd used to trigger the alchemy, and I fell unconscious.

* * *

I was in a different room when I came to. Sloth, Loki, and I were tied up. Our bags were on a table on the opposite side of the room. Two people were watching us. They weren't the same ones who'd captured us initially, but they were wearing black robes and were taking turns keeping a weapon pointed at us. There was a glass bottle on the table with our things.

"Where am I?" I asked as I came around.

"You're in a holding cell," answered the middle aged woman with her weapon lowered as her parter continued to aim his in my direction.

"What were you doing in the Department of Mysteries?" she asked.

"Exploring," I replied. "We're explorers."

"You picked the wrong place to satisfy your curiosity," she said. "How did you get past the security?"

"Security?" I asked. "We came through the archway."

She glanced at her partner and muttered, "He's been memory charmed to keep him from talking under the veritasyrum. The girl probably too." Then she turned to me and asked, "Do you know your name? Where are you from?"

"My name is Marcus Oren. I'm from the city of Liore, on the east side of the country of Amestris, north of Ishbal. And my memory is fine."

"Let's test that," she said, skeptically. "What can you tell me about the objects you were carrying?"

"The hilt with designs on it is a weapon that extends an energy blade you use like a sword. Most of the red crystals are used in alchemy. The big one is the Philosopher's Stone." I gasped. I'd just casually identified the most powerful and dangerous object in all of alchemy to people who, the only thing I knew about them was that they were holding me prisoner. "Why did I say that?"

"That's a good question," she mused. "You can't lie until the veritasyrum wears off, so you really believe what yo said. And so soon after the Gringotts break in." She tapped her index finger against her lip for a moment, then told her partner, "Keep an eye on them. If the Philosopher's Stone is involved, we'll need a consultant."

A few minutes after the woman left, Sloth started to come around.

"Is getting captured and tied up just going to be a thing traveling with you?" she asked.

"That's not fair," I complained. "This is the first time it's happened to you."

"I'm just saying, you made a habit of this and didn't exactly break it when we teamed up."

"They've dosed me with some kind of truth drug," I said, changing the subject. "Probably you too."

"The sky is orange at sunset, but usually blue during the day," said Sloth. "Yep. Looks like they dosed me too. What do we do?"

"They didn't think to take my boots-" I began to say.

"Evanesco!" called out the guard, waving the rod in his hand toward me, and my boots vanished off my feet.

"Truth drugs. Right. Sorry, Greed," said Sloth.

"How did you do that?" I asked the guard. "I've never seen anything quite like that?"

He didn't speak and just watched Sloth and I for any sign we were about to try something. The two of us sat in silence for a few moments when the woman returned, followed by an old man with a long, grey beard, wearing purple robes. The old man's eye was instantly drawn to the Philosopher's Stone, and I detected a note of recognition.

"You made the right decision contacting me," he said to the woman who'd escorted him in. He then turned his attention to me, bending at the waist to look me straight in the eye. After a long moment, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a small bag. "Would you like a sherbet lemon?"

I looked dubiously at the sack of wrapped candies he offered. "They already dosed me with veritasyrum," I said.

"Then you've nothing to fear from accepting," noted the man with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "In any case, I am satisfied with your story and you are both free to go." As he said that, he drew a rod of his own, gestured vaguely, and the ropes on Sloth, Loki, and I all vanished just like my boots had a few minutes earlier.

"Dumbledore, you can't be serious," exclaimed the woman who'd brought him in the first place. Even so, neither of the two guards raised thir weapons.

"I don't joke about offering sweets," said Dumbledore. "Besides, you couldn't have held them. And once they were gone, things would've been far more difficult."

I took one of the wrapped candies from the offered bag, gave it a cursory look, then popped it into my mouth. The two guards just stared incredulously.

Sloth hopped to her feet and asked, "Can I have one?"

"Of course," he said, offering the bag. Then he turned toward the guards. "I would like for neither of you to speak of this, and I trust the unspeakables who found them will live up to their namesake."

"What's this all about?" asked the woman.

"I regret that secrets must be maintained for the time being. The enemy has already penetrated Gringotts, and the fewer who know the full story, the safer the Stone will be."

They weren't happy about it, but both guards nodded their assent and left the room.

"Thank you for that," I said when they'd gone.

"Who is this enemy?" asked Sloth.

"As I told the Aurors," said Dumbledore, "some secrets must regrettably be maintained. As you are both well aware, it is possible to extract secrets from the unwilling."

Sloth and I couldn't deny the point. While we considered our situation, we repacked our bags.

"I will say," continued Dumbledore, "that the enemy is currently attempting to acquire a Philosopher's Stone, and that if he should succeed, the consequences could be disastrous."

"We're well aware of what the Stone can do in the wrong hands," said Sloth.

"Indeed," he replied. "A good friend of mine recently entrusted his Stone to my care." He withdrew a blood red stone from a pocket. It was smaller than our Stone, but I could feel the power contained within. It was a genuine Philosopher's Stone. "I have agreed to keep it under guard at the safest location possible. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am willing to extend the same offer to you, to keep the Stone safe until the danger has passed."

"A school you say?" I asked with a twinkle in my eye that fully lived up to the homunculus moniker I'd chosen. "Where you learn how to do things like the ropes?"

"He does already have one Stone," noted Sloth. "If he was going to cause trouble, he wouldn't need ours."

"And with no idea what sort of threats might be in this world, we'd be worse at protecting it than he would be," I added.

"Are we agreed, then?" asked Dumbledore.

"On one condition," I said. "We attend this school so we can be close by if anything goes wrong."

"I'm afraid Hogwarts is a boarding school for ages eleven through eighteen," he said. "You are far too old to pass as a student, and you far too young."

"We can fix that," I said with a smirk.

Sloth nodded her assent to me, and I clapped my hands. I placed on palm against the oroboros mark in the center of my chest, and the other on Sloth's oroboros mark on her shoulder blade. Sloth grew and I shrunk amid a shower of blue alchemic sparks dancing along our bodies. We stopped at the same height and looked at Dumbledore, who smiled.

"It would seem I've run out of objections," he said. "I will enroll you both as muggleborn exchange students from a distant land. What names shall I use?"

"I go by Sloth," she said as she placed the Stone in Dumbledore's hands, "but if that's a problem, I've also answered to Nina Tucker."

"Likewise, either Greed or Marcus Oren," I told him. "It's for the best that we be there," I added. "If the goal is to keep the enemy from getting the Stone, we'll need protection too. We both know how to make it."

Loki came around at that point and I greeted my dog, quickly assuring him that I was still me, and that everything was alright now.

"In that case," said Dumbledore, "in addition to your normal classes, I shall have to schedule Occlumency lessons for the both of you. Well, come with me."

Dumbledore led the three of us through the halls, down an elevator,, and into a massive lobby. Floating paper airplanes that accompanied us on the elevator rushed out to join a flock of them traveling down the long hall above a crowd of people. I caught sight of a statue in the center, depicting a number of inhuman entities, and what looked like fireplaces along the walls before Dumbledore grasped my forearm. I felt my entire body compress. It was an uncomfortable, but not exactly painful process.

An instant later, I was back to normal, and the four of us were now outside. Sloth and Loki both seemed as disoriented as I felt.

"This is Diagon Alley," said Dumbledore after making sure none of us were going to vomit. "Here are your Hogwarts acceptance letters." He handed us each an envelope. "I will, of course, have to sort out some paperwork to make it official. I imagine poor Minerva will be most put out with me accepting new students so late." He also handed each of us a small bag that jingled. "Since I am taking your Philosopher's Stone, it's only fair that I leave you with the money to buy your school supplies. I look forward to seeing you both at the start of the term." With that, he vanished with a popping noise, leaving us alone in the narrow avenue.

* * *

Sloth and I stepped off to the side of the street out of the flow of traffic to look over the letters we'd been given. In the package of documents was a form letter, a list of supplies, and a train ticket.

I looked to Sloth with an eager grin and asked, "Ready to go buy a magic wand?"

It didn't take long to find the right shop. When we went inside, we found hundreds of boxes piled haphazardly in the small store. An old man looked up from his book as we entered.

"First year students?" he asked, setting his book aside. "My name is Ollivander. Welcome to my shop. Each wand you see here has been expertly hand crafted. The woods have been carefully selected and paired with a core of an appropriate magical substance. You won't find higher quality anywhere else."

"I'm Sloth. This is Greed."

"Those are quite unusual names," he noted. "May I ask where you're from."

"A very... very distant country called Amestris," I said. "You probably haven't heard of it."

"You would be correct," said Ollivander with a slight bow. "So, shall we see about matching you to your wands?"

"What are our options?" I asked.

"I'm afraid it doesn't work that way," he said with a good natured chuckle. "The wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around."

"Then how-?" began Sloth, but Ollivander was already answering.

"We make a few educated guesses, then you'll try wands out until we have a match. Your wand arms, if you please." He'd taken a line of measuring tape from around his neck.

"Which arm is that?" asked.

"Muggleborns," he noted to himself, then said, "your dominant hand. The one you write with?"

Dumbledore had used the same term to describe our cover identity. On the plus side, it seemed to be working. On the minus side, it would help if I knew what I was pretending to be.

"What does muggleborn mean?" I asked as he measured our right arms.

"A wizard child of two muggles," he said. Then noting our blank stares clarified. "Muggles are what we call non-magical folk. Your parents weren't wizards, were they?"

Sloth and I glanced at one another and shook our heads.

"Then that makes you muggleborn. Don't worry," he hastily added. "We don't discriminate at this shop."

It hadn't occurred to me that he might, which made his reassurance less than reassuring.

"Try these," he said, shoving a wand at each of us. Indicating the one in my hand, he rattled off, "Rosewood. Thirteen inches. Very flexible. Dragon heartstring core. Excellent for transfiguration." Turning to Sloth, he said, "Ash. Twelve inches. Unyielding. With a core of unicorn hair. Good for charms."

"What do we?" I started to ask.

"Wave them," he said. "Give them a good flick and see if they're a match."

Sloth and I waved the wands, not really sure what to expect. All that happened was that Ollivander snatched them out of our hands and put different wands into them. Again, he rattled off statistics and selling points that meant nothing to me, and again he took both wands away.

After the fifth attempt, I asked, "What are we looking for?"

"When there's a match, there will be a feeling of warmth, and a small sign of magic. Usually a few sparks."

We tried for three hours, seemingly going through every wand in the shop, but not a single one reacted to either of us in any way.

"I must say," declared Ollivander, "this has never happened before. I have had some tough customers, but I've always been able to match a wand to every customer who's come into my shop. And now to at the same time. Very curious indeed."

"What does that mean?" asked Sloth.

"Wandlore is a vast and sometimes mysterious subject, even to those of us who have dedicated our lives to its study. In the grander scale, I am not certain what this portends. As to the immediate, I'm afraid it means neither of you will be leaving with a wand today."

"What?" I asked. "But we need one."

"I am aware," he said, helplessly. "As I said earlier, the wand chooses the wizard, and no wand chose you."

* * *

Sloth and I left the shop feeling disoriented and worried. Loki kept us from just standing outside the wand shop staring into space. Licking at our hands and urging us to move around after the three hour failure of a shopping trip.

"Let's get the other supplies and then worry about the wand thing," I suggested. "It'll give us something to do while we think."

We stopped off at the book shop first, and began to read over the textbooks while the other was being fitted for their robes. Once we'd gathered everything else, Sloth, Loki, and I sat down in an alley, where I transmuted some garbage into new pairs of shoes for the two of us.

"I think I figured out why the wands don't work," said Sloth. "From what I read, it looks like wizards are really rare. And they usually demonstrate some sort of uncontrolled magic when they're younger. Did anything weird happen around you growing up?"

"No," I said, thinking back and frowning.

"Neither did Nina, who I'm based on. Greed, I think we're muggles."

"They don't let muggles in to Hogwarts, do they?" I guessed. "So not only can't we learn to use this world's magic, but we can't get to where Dumbledore is keeping our Philosopher's Stone."

"I was really looking forward to this," said Sloth sadly. "Nina died before she could go to school."

There had to be something we'd missed. I flipped open one of the books we'd bought to a random page. "You know..." I said, glancing over the spell described. "Some of these spells have effects that would be easy enough to duplicate with alchemy."

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

In response, I took the wooden hilt engraved with alchemic arrays we'd used to fight the Nazis out of my bag. It would do for raw materials. I set it on the ground, clapped my hands, and touched it. The wood glowed blue as it thinned and lengthened, becoming covered in a much more complex alchemic array. Then I took a red stone and affixed it to one end.

"I'm proposing we make our own wands," I said. I got to my feet, donned my wizard hat, and pointed my wand at a pile of crumpled up newspapers. The array engraved along its length glowed blue for an instant, then the newspapers cracked with blue alchemic light. A small puff of smoke exploded off them, and when it cleared, an unadorned shaft of wood was there.

Sloth picked it up and stared at it. Then she reached into her own bag and affixed a red stone to her wand. She pointed it at the ground and a simple alchemic array drew itself along the shaft. When the design reached the red stone, the array ignited, glowing red. A block of stone rose out of the earth, high enough to form a makeshift chair. The design vanished from her wand when the transmutation finished, leaving hte wood bare again. Sloth looked at what she'd done, then threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

"It's not a perfect plan," I admitted once our lips parted. "We'll need to come up with alchemic equivalents for every spell, and anything that violates equivalent exchange uses up red stone energy. Your wand'll burn through it no matter what since your alchemy's powered by the stone directly. But if we can set up a lab to make more stones, that shouldn't be a problem."

Sloth smiled broadly. "We can do this," she said, giggling with glee. Then she pointed her wand at the block she'd transmuted, the wand glowed red, and the block merged back into the ground.

* * *

We got some food for Loki at an inn called the Leaky Cauldron and spent the rest of the night reading next to the fireplace in the common area with Loki curled up and sleeping at our feet. The next day, it was time to go to the train station.

The three of us arrived at the train station with plenty of time to spare, which was fortunate, since the platform our train was supposed to leave on was nowhere to be found. Asking other travelers prompted only strange looks.

"We could see the Leaky Cauldron normally from outside," I reasoned aloud. "If they're using the same protections to keep muggles out, we should be able to see the platform here."

"We can't be the only travelers going to Hogwarts," said Sloth. "Maybe we just arrived to early. I say we wait and keep an eye out for people with owl cages. I don't see anyone with one here, and they were on the list of approved pets."

So we waited near platform nine, watching for other travelers our apparent age with odd pets. As the hour of our departure approached, Sloth's plan paid off. A small family escorting a teenage traveler walked by. An owl cage was attached to the top of her luggage trolley. As a group, they approached the barrier separating platforms nine and ten, then passed through the apparently solid matter there.

Sloth, Loki, and I approached the barrier cautiously. I reached out and touched it, and saw my hand pass through. I nodded to Sloth and stepped through the barrier concealing platform 9 3/4. A train bearing the prominent nameplate "Hogwarts Express" was waiting. Sloth and Loki followed shortly after, and we quickly got our luggage loaded onto the train and settled into an empty compartment.

A few minutes later, the door to our compartment opened, revealing a pale, blond boy flanked by a pair of other boys. All the same age Sloth and I were affecting.

"I'm Draco Malfoy," declared the blond boy at the lead as though that should mean something to us. "This is Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. Who are you?"

"I'm Greed," I told him. "This is Sloth."

Draco stared for along moment before saying, "Those aren't your real names."

"Nina Tucker," said Sloth.

"Marcus Oren," I said, following suit.

"You aren't supposed to be here," said Draco. "This compartment is reserved."

Loki took exception to Draco's tone and growled low. I put a hand on his head to calm him.

"You'd best keep that mutt under control," snapped Draco.

I'd been getting ready to vacate the compartment until that point. "You know, I didn't see a reservation card when I got to this room..."

"You don't know this yet," said Draco, "but the Malfoys are one of the oldest and most powerful pureblood houses. You don't want to make an enemy like me, especially not on your first day at Hogwarts."

"If you didn't want me as an enemy," I said, kicking my feet up and lounging as I continued stroking Loki's head, "you shouldn't have threatened me."

Draco looked between the two of us, then said, "I'll remember this." Then he signaled his companions and left.

"You think this really was his compartment?" asked Sloth.

"I doubt it," I said. "He thought he could intimidate us into giving up our room."

"Probably," agreed Sloth. "It was kind of funny seeing you posturing against an eleven year old."

"I'd have been dead a dozen times over if I wasn't willing to take a particular four year old seriously," I reminded her.

"So, I left you with some bad habits."

A knock came at the door and an older woman pushing a cart opened it.

"Honeydukes," said the woman cheerfully. "Would you like to buy anything? We have chocolate frogs, every flavor beans, cauldron cakes, what would you like?"

"First, can you reserve a compartment?" asked Sloth.

"I'm afraid not. I know how crowded it is this year, but it's first come, first serve."

"Good to know," I said. "How much is everything?"

We bought a couple of each of the sweets to see what we'd end up liking. I opened up a bag of the every flavor beans and tried one, then immediately spat it out.

"Why would anyone make a jelly bean that literally tastes like dog shit?" I exclaimed. As I said it, Loki immediately scarfed down the bean I'd spit out.

"I guess they really mean it when they advertise 'every flavor'," said Sloth, giggling at my misfortune. Then she opened up one of the chocolate frogs which leaped at her face. She was so startled, Sloth reflexively went intangible and the frog landed on the chair behind her. She had to leap up to stop from occupying the same space as the animated confectionery.

Whatever had given it the ability to move quickly faded on opening the package, and Sloth reported it tasted like ordinary chocolate. In the package, we found a card. The face was unfamiliar, but that was to be expected. The name, however, was unmistakable. Parcelsus Van Hohenheim.

"We knew there were doubles of people in different worlds," said Sloth. "They usually had different lives."

"There's a Philosopher's Stone in this world," I said. "Even if it wasn't him, someone made it."

"Dumbledore seemed to imply there's only one," noted Sloth. "Maybe they learned the lesson the first time here."

"I hope so," I said. Then I blinked. "Where did he go?" I pointed at the card with an empty picture where Hohenheim used to be.

"Maybe the pictures wear off the same way the frog moving around wore off," suggested Sloth.

As we stared at the blank card, the image of Hohenheim peaked into the frame.

"Hello?" I asked the clearly moving picture.

Hohenheim's image ducked back out of frame, then strolled back to the center and resumed his previous pose. He didn't respond to further inquiries. In fact, he seemed to be standing as stock still as a person pretending to be a still photograph.

"Excuse me," came a voice as our compartment door opened, causing Sloth and I to jump. A girl with bushy brown hair waited until she had our attention. "Have either of you seen a toad named Trevor? A boy named Neville lost him."

I darted a look back at the trading card and said, "We can finish this later." Then I turned to the girl and said, "We haven't seen a toad, but maybe we can help. Loki can track by scent."

"That would be a big help. Thank you. My name's Hermione, by the way. Hermione Granger."

"I go by Greed," I told her.

"I'm Sloth."

"You're named after sins?" asked Hermione.

"It's what we like to be called," I said. "We have regular names too. Mine's Marcus Oren."

"Nina Tucker," said Sloth. "Do you have anything with Trevor's scent?"

"Neville should," replied Hermione. "Follow me."

Sloth, Loki, and I followed Hermione to where a nervous looking boy was asking door to door after his missing toad.

"Did you find Trevor?" asked Neville when he saw Hermione.

"This is Loki," I said. "He can find Trevor if you have anything with his scent."

Neville turned out his pockets and Loki sniffed them. Turning about, Loki caught the scent and took off down the corridor. Sloth and I ran after, with Neville and "Hermione coming after.

Loki brought us three cars down and to the door leading to the luggage car, where a terrified looking toad stared down my floppy-eared brown dog, who was poking him with his nose.

"Trevor!" Neville exclaimed happily as he scooped up the toad. "Thanks Hermione. And thank you..."

"Greed," I supplied.

"Sloth," she added extending a hand.

Neville shifted the toad around to shake Sloth's hand, but that was all the opening Trevor needed to make another escape attempt. Hermione and I both dove for the escaping toad and ended up colliding in the attempt. When we got back to our feet, Loki again had Trevor cornered for Neville to retrieve.

"Um, thanks again," said Neville, embarrassed and apologetic.

"Why don't we get Trevor to a compartment where we can close the door," I suggested.

"I didn't think students were allowed to have dogs at Hogwarts," said Hermione on the way back to the compartment Sloth and I had defended from Draco.

"Special permission from the headmaster," I said. "We couldn't leave Loki behind."

"They've let folks have pets not on the list before," said Neville. "It's usually okay as long as they behave themselves."

"I'm muggleborn, so this is all new to me," declared Hermione.

"Us too," I said, indicating Sloth.

"I'm not," said Neville, unsure of what to say.

"Do you know what's going on with these cards?" I asked, holding up Hohenheim's card to Neville.

"Famous witch and wizard cards," he said. "They come with chocolate frogs. Some folks collect them."

"No," clarified Sloth. "Why is he moving?"

"Why wouldn't he be?" asked Neville, confused.

"I've read about this," said Hermione, excited. "Wizard photographs are developed in a special potion that makes the people in them move around like the person really would. I hear Hogwarts is full of portraits that can talk as well as move."

"Do they know they're in a picture?" I asked.

"The portraits do," said Neville. "Photographs mostly just keep doing what they were doing around the time the picture was taken. Time doesn't really move forward for them like it does for the portraits. If it did, we wouldn't use them for newspapers and other things you throw out."

At that point, an announcement came through the train, "We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes time. Please leave your luggage on the train. It will be taken to the school separately."

"I'm surprised you didn't know about the photographs," said Hermione while we all gathered up our things. "The recipe is in our potions textbook. Haven't you read it yet? I've learned all my books by heart."

"We got our books late," said Sloth. "We only got the chance to buy our supplies yesterday."

"Why would your letters be late?" asked Hermione. "I heard the own post is very reliable, and surely the professors wouldn't want anyone coming unprepared."

"We're exchange students," I supplied. "There must've been complications from that."

"Where are you from?" asked Neville.

"It's a small country called Amestris," I replied. "You've probably never heard of it."

We were spared any further questions on exiting the rain when a man larger than Sig Curtis and Alex Loius Armstrong combined, wearing a thick black beard called out, "First Years! First years over here! All right there, Harry?" A black haired boy wearing glasses nodded to him. Then he continued calling, "Come on, follow me! Any more first years? Mind your step now! First years, follow me!"

The giant of a man separated the first year students out from the returning students and led us down a path, away from the carriages, drawn by skeletal horses with leathery bat-like wings, that the returning students were boarding.

At the end of the path was a massive lake. A small fleet of boats was moored at the path's end, and across the lake was a massive castle. The castle was perched on a mountain. Sloth and I still hadn't learned to swim, so we were nervous boarding the watercraft with Loki. Neville and Hermione joined us.

Once we were all aboard, the huge man ordered the boats, "Forward!" and they pulled themselves across the lake. Our fleet entered a hidden cave in the mountain under the caste, and we disembarked at a small dock. We were then herded up a flight of stairs to a very heavy oak door. It was opened by a black haired woman wearing green robes.

"First years," said the large man, introducing the woman, "Professor McGonagall."

"Thank you, Hagrid," acknowledged Professor McGonagall. "I will take them from here."

She then led us to a cramped room off the entry hall. Then she announced, "Welcome to Hogwarts. The start of term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into hour Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony, because while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room.

"The four Houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history, and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting. I shall return when we are ready for you. Please wait quietly."

She left the room, and I heard Hermione wonder aloud which of the spells she'd learned before the term that she'd need for the test they'd subject us to at the Sorting. There seemed little point worrying about it now. Hopefully, we could improvise with whatever came next.

Unexpectedly, a pair of translucent, silvery figures floated through a wall in the middle of a conversation amongst themselves. On noticing us waiting there, they greeted us. The ghosts didn't have time to say much before Professor McGonagall returned and ushered us out and into the Great Hall.

I registered Dumbledore and Hagrid with a number of other odd looking people at the faculty table. Four long tables held students dressed in the same uniform Sloth and I were wearing. The hovering candles and clear view of the night sky were no distraction from the silvery ghosts hovering over the tables. Actual ghosts. Proof of an afterlife. If we were found out as muggles in this ceremony and kicked out, if we never recovered the Philosopher's Stone, this trip was already worth it.

Sloth's eyes were likewise on the ghosts, but she was less enthused. It was little wonder. It'd take more study to confirm, but it was unlikely you could become a ghost if you didn't have a soul.

The first years were put in line and a battered wizard hat was put on a stool. Then a rip near the brim opened like a mouth and the hat began to sing.

"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,  
But don't judge on what you see,  
I'll eat myself if you can find  
A smarter hat than me.  
You can keep your bowlers black,  
Your top hats sleek and tall,  
For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat  
And I can cap them all.  
There's nothing hidden in your head  
The Sorting Hat can't see,  
So try me on and I will tell you  
Where you ought to be  
You might belong in Gryffindor,  
Where dwell the brave at heart,  
Their daring nerve and chivalry  
Set Gryffindors apart;  
You might belong in Hufflepuff  
Where they are just and loyal,  
Those patient Hufflepuffs are True  
And unafraid of toil;  
Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,  
If you've a ready mind,  
Where those of wit and learning,  
Will always find their kind;  
Or perhaps in Slytherin  
You'll make your real friends,  
Those cunning folk will use any means  
To achieve their ends.  
So put me on! Don't be afraid!  
And don't get in a flap!  
You're in safe hands (though I have none)  
For I'm a Thinking Cap!"

The rest of the first years relaxed visibly on learning what the Sorting would involve. I got more worried. I was a fully trained and certified State Alchemist with a red stone. I'd be able to fake some display of magic. I didn't have any way to keep a magic hat from plucking secrets out of my mind. And I had more than my share of dangerous secrets beyond the fact that I wasn't a wizard.

Students were called up in alphabetical order. They put on the hat and it called out one of the four Houses. Sometimes it called out a House instantly, other times it took a few minutes. Still, it was a remarkably quick process, even with each student cheered by their new House and going to join their table. Before I had time to come up with a plan, "Marcus Oren," was called.

I glanced pleadingly at Dumbledore where he sat at the head table. He nodded pleasantly, but I had no idea what that meant. I couldn't delay any longer, so I picked up the hat, sat on the stool, and placed it on my head.

"Not every day, I sort a student that's already got a background of sword-fighting monsters," said a quiet voice inside the hat. "Not to mention one without a drop of magic in him, planning to fool every professor here. Hard to get more ambitious than that. Don't worry, telling them about that isn't my job. If you can pull it off, good for you. And your other secrets are safe with me. I'd be out of a job if I made a habit of telling what I see in the Sortings."

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Ah, there's your core," said the hat. "Shouldn't be any surprise for you. Ravenclaw!"

Only the last word had been audible to anyone else. I took of the hat to see the Ravenclaw table cheering me. I replaced it on the stool and went to sit down with my new housemates, who cheerfully congratulated me. I shot a smile and a nod to Sloth, who let Loki come to me at the table. Dumbledore calmed a momentary commotion at the head table, and the Sorting continued.

Neville and Hermione had both already been Sorted into Gryffindor. Whispers came through the students with the name "Harry Potter" was called.

"Is it really the Boy Who Lived?" asked one whisper.

"They say he defeated You Know Who when he was just a baby," said a student right next to me.

"No," I replied. "I don't know who."

"The Dark Lord," he attempted to clarify for me. "He Who Must Not Be Named."

Getting frustrated, I asked, "Why must he not be named?"

I didn't get an answer because a huge cheer erupted from the Gryffindor table. Someone was yelling, "We got Potter! We got Potter!" Hagrid at the head table gave the boy a thumbs up. This must've been the Harry he'd been asking after at the train.

A few more names were called, and I joined in greeting the new Ravenclaws. A few names later, they called out, "Nina Tucker!" I was on the edge of my seat while the hat seemed to be considering. I wondered what it was telling her about herself.

"Hufflepuff!" called the hat. After McGonagall's speech about the Houses, Sloth seemed so much farther away than across the room as she removed the Sorting Hat and joined her new housemates.

The Sorting concluded shortly after, and Dumbledore greeted the students, "Welcome! Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I wold like to say a few words. And they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Thank you!"

As the old wizard sat down, the empty tables were instantly filled with food. There was no sound or crackle of energy. The food was just not there one instant and there the next. It was intimidating how casually the other students treated this.

"Eat," suggested one of my neighbors. "It's not going to hurt you."

The roast did smell good, so I decided to worry about how this was possible later. The food was excellent, especially the roast beef. I couldn't help but notice slight irregularities in the food, consistent with it being hand made. Expertly hand made, but it didn't have things like potatoes all exactly the same size that I associated with transmuted food.

After everyone had eaten, the food vanished, leaving empty, immaculately clean plates. Then deserts appeared, the same way the main course had. It was just as expertly prepared. When desert was finished, Dumbledore again rose to speak.

"Just a few more words now that we're all fed and watered. I have a few start of term notices to give you.

"First years should note that hte forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well.

"I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.

"Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their House teams should contact Madam Hooch.

"And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third floor corridor on the right hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death." That only a few of the first years laughed told me he was serious. That must be where he was protecting the Philosopher's Stones.

Dumbledore concluded by leading the school in a song, with a ribbon produced from his wand forming the words for us to sing along with. Then, the prefects brought us out of the hall to our separate House dormitories. I tried to hang back and signal to Sloth, but the first years were being herded most carefully. We'd have to talk the next day.

The castle was massive, filled with secret passages, twisting corridors, and more staircases than there were students as far as I could tell. Hermione had been right about the portraits. They watched our procession as we passed, sometimes calling out greetings, sometimes following after us into neighboring frames.

The prefects led us up a spiral staircase to a door set with a brass eagle knocker. When they approached, it animated and asked, "What runs fastest when it's standing perfectly still?"

"Don't answer right away," warned one of the prefects. "If you answer the riddle wrong, you'll be locked out of the common room until someone else comes and gets it right. The riddle changes every day."

"With a group this size," I noted, "each of us should be able to answer once and the right answer gets the whole group inside, right?"

"True," acknowledged the prefect, "but it's best to get used to stopping and thinking about the riddle now so when you come up on your own, you'll be in the habit."

"An hourglass!" exclaimed one of the first years, happily. "The sand doesn't run down as quickly if you move it all about."

The door swung open in acknowledgement of the correct answer. Beyond was a circular room with a star field printed on the ceiling. Numerous chairs, desks, tables, couches, and bookcases rested on the midnight blue carpet. Large windows overlooked the whole grounds. I briefly switched to my purple, slitted, homunculus eyes to verify that we had an excellent view in all directions, which would be visible to human eyes when the sun came up. Likewise, the tall windows would provide a lot of natural light during the day. Some blue and bronze silks accented the room and made the large space seem homier.

The prefects ushered us up to our dormitories, which were separated out by gender and year. I found my trunk of books and supplies had been placed at the foot of a four poster bed with a blue canopy and bedspread and bronze colored pillows. Loki quickly climbed up on the bed and curled up at the foot. He was asleep almost instantly.

"You ate too many sausages at the feast," I told the sleeping dog fondly as I opened up my trunk and verified everything was there.

The other boys had collapsed into bed almost as fast as Loki had. I retrieved my wand and touched the red stone at the end of it to each of my schoolbooks, and then to my temple. The contents of each book poured into my mind. I hadn't had the time the other students had with their books so far, but using a red stone to instantly assimilate them let me catch up to Hermione, at least where the required textbooks were concerned. That done, I closed my trunk and went to bed myself.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Welcome to the sequel to the Iron Sole Alchemist. Our interdimensional travelers will soon find that even without magic of their own, Hogwarts has much to teach them.


	2. Chapter 2: Settling in

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 2) Settling In  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The next day, I left the common room for the Great Hall early, hoping to get the chance to talk with Sloth at breakfast before classes started. I should have waited to go down with the other students. The staircases we'd taken to the Ravenclaw tower weren't where they'd been last night. One of the portraits helpfully informed me that those stairs would be back Friday. I stumbled into a dozen dead ends and circled back on myself half as many times. I was on the verge of deconstructing a stuck door out of frustration when the Grey Lady, the Ravenclaw House Ghost, floated by, told me I had to tickle that door to get it open, then gave me directions to the Great Hall.

"Where have you been?" asked Sloth, coming over from the Hufflepuff table to greet me at the door. "The other Ravenclaws arrived ten minutes ago."

"I got lost," I admitted. "This place is huge, and the layout changes."

"The food's already out," said Sloth, indicating the tables. "You and Loki get something to eat. We should get together outside after classes."

We returned to our respective tables, and I handed some bacon down to Loki while getting myself a bowl of porridge. I'd just taken my first bite when a swarm of owls filled the room. One of them dropped a letter in my lap. It was from Dumbledore. I was to come to his office Friday afternoon, after classes. I folded the letter into my potions book for later.

Traveling with the other Ravenclaws, I made it to my first class in time. Transfiguration with Professor McGonagall. The class opened with a brief safety lecture. Afterward, I nearly panicked when she turned her desk into a pig. Fortunately, that wasn't going to be our first assignment, but rather was just a demonstration of what could be done with this type of magic. I could duplicate that with alchemy, but only boosted with a red stone, and even then it would be difficult.

The lecture portion of the class reinforced what I'd absorbed from the textbook. The rules of transfiguration were very different from alchemy. Like alchemy, living things were harder than nonliving, but that was where the similarity ended. Transfiguration worked by imposing patterns on things. Rather than understanding the structure and composition of the source and destination material, transfiguration relied on recognizing similarities between the source and destination objects.

Finally, Professor McGonagall passed out matches and told us to try to turn them into needles. Wood into metal, a violation of equivalent exchange that would force me to use a red stone. For the first and simplest exercise in this class. I signed, clapped my hands, and grasped my wand, who's array reconfigured slightly in my hand to allow for the transmutation.

With the match on my desk, I pointed the wand at it. The transmutation array glowed blue for an instant, and the match turned into a sewing needle.

"Oh my, Mr. Oren," declared Professor McGonagall. "I don't believe I've ever seen such a perfectly done transfiguration on the first try. Five points to Ravenclaw!"

I glanced around and saw that no one else's match had so much as changed color. In my efforts not to look like a muggle, I'd overcompensated. For the whole class, mine was the only match that had even slightly changed, in a room full of frustrated wizard children.

To my relief, the next class was Herbology, where we studied how to grow and make use of various plants with magical properties. Since the magic was in the plants and not the students, I didn't need to sue my counterfeit wand. Professor Sprout, a shorter, stockier witch, had a passion for the subject.

Working in the soil reminded me I'd need to set up a place to grow Philosopher's Flowers to replace the red stones I used up in classes here. I stayed after to ask Professor Sprout about how to order growth lamps, with the half-true excuse that I wanted to set up a garden when I got back from Hogwarts, and I couldn't set it up outside. She happily suggested a supplier and directed me to the owlery where I could send a letter.

I sent off a messenger owl to the Herbology supplier Professor Sprout recommended, along with enough gold coins to furnish a large garden with lights. The detour to the owlery meant separating from my classmates, so I had to find my way through the labyrinthine castle to my history of magic class.

My foot had gone through a disappearing stair, and I'd wasted ten minutes trying to get a door opened that turned out to just be a strangely decorated section of wall when I saw a wastebasket hovering on its own exiting a classroom. Hoping it was being carried by a friendly ghost I could ask for directions, I called out, "Hello! Can you tell me how to get to Professor Binns' class? I think I'm already late."

There was a popping sound,, and a short man with a mouth just a bit too wide to be human appeared, hovering in the air, holding the wastebasket. A malevolent grin spread across his face. "Little firstie doesn't know me yet." Then he swooped toward me at high speed, overturned the wastebasket on my head and hit it three times, ringing it like a bell.

"The name's Peeves!" he yelled as he rocketed down the hall away from me.

"So, not a friendly ghost," I said to Loki, who hadn't had time to move until Peeves was out of sight. "Poltergeist?" I guessed, the name coming to my mind from the defense against the dark arts textbook.

When I finally found Professor Binns' classroom, he was already in the middle of a lecture. Binns had apparently died some time ago, but he was spending his afterlife teaching. His lecturing style was monotonous and droning. I was able to find my place in the textbook, but Binns' style made the feats of great wizards and goblin wars seem boring and mundane. It was quickly made clear I hadn't missed much from the lecture, and that I'd be better off learning the material on my own.

* * *

History of magic was my last class for the day, so after class let out, I headed for the grounds. I played a game of fetch with Loki while we waited for Sloth. She showed up a half hour later and plopped down on the grass.

"You didn't warn me school involved taking so many notes," sighed Sloth.

"You're ready to quit after your first day?" I asked.

"No," she said, "but did they have to assign homework on the first day?"

"For most of them, they've been going to school for years now," I said. "You'll get used to it."

Sloth sat up and asked, "Did you hear about that Gryffindor boy? Harry Potter?"

"The person I asked at the feats was being evasive. What's so special about Harry Potter?" I tossed the stick for Loki again.

"The wizards fought a war against a dark wizard over a decade ago. A lot of the students here lost their families in it. People still don't like saying the dark wizard's name. It's Voldemort, by the way.

"Anyway, this dark wizard went after Harry's parents, killed them both, but somehow when he tried to kill Harry, something went wrong. Harry ended up with that scar on his forehead and the dark wizard hasn't been seen since. They call him the Boy Who Lived."

"Huh," I said, tossing the stick again. "Think it has anything to do with whoever's after the Stone?"

Sloth shrugged. "It's been ten years, but this is Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts. Who knows?"

"That reminds me, did you get a note from Dumbledore at breakfast?"

Sloth nodded. "He did say something about Occlumency lessons. On top of the rest of our course load."

I leaned over and whispered, "Did you want an imprint of our textbooks? I used a red stone to assimilate them last night."

"You cheater!" she exclaimed, smiling. "Of course I want it."

I clapped my hands, then put my arm around her. With my palm flat against Sloth's back, where the oroboros mark was hidden under her robe, I implanted full comprehension of our textbooks into her mind.

"That won't mean less homework," I said, pulling her close against me, "but it ought to make that homework easier."

Sloth leaned her head against my shoulder and closed her eyes. "Can we stay like this for a while? I've missed you."

"I've missed you too, Sloth."

We sat there for a long while, Loki soon curling up at our feet.

"I ordered us some growth lamps for our Philosopher's Flowers," I said. "I think we can set up a lab on the grounds. Maybe under the stadium over that way," I gestured.

"That'll be nice," murmured Sloth. "Our own private getaway."

A little while later, I said, "We don't want to be late for dinner."

"We don't need to eat," Sloth reminded me without moving.

"No, but Loki does," I reminded her in turn. "Come on, let's walk to the Great Hall together."

We stood, Sloth stretched, and we walked hand in hand through the castle. Once inside, we reluctantly parted, our fingers lingering, and we went to our separate tables.

"What're you doing with that Hufflepuff girl?" asked one of the Ravenclaw boys at my table when I sat down.

"I don't see how that's any of your business," I said.

"Let Filch catch you snogging in the halls and he'll make it his business. And you'll be lucky all you lose is the points you got showing off in transfiguration."

"Showing off?" I asked. "Those are House points. Don't you want to win the cup?"

"Forget it," huffed the boy. Then he dug into his food so I wouldn't talk to him further.

"You're still on my side, aren't you, Loki?" I asked while bribing him with pork chops.

I reached the Ravenclaw common room after only three tries. At the door, the brass eagle knocker asked, "What runs but never walks?"

I thought through a dozen magical creatures from my defense book before I smacked my forehead and answered, "water." Then I walked in, sat down at one of the desks, and got the day's homework out of the way.

After that, I picked a book off a shelf in the common room, curled up in a chair, and read with Loki curled up at my feet until the other first years started heading for bed. I was trying to pass as normal, so that meant not demonstrating I didn't need to sleep.

* * *

I thought to ask a prefect today's route to the Great Hall, and as a result, arrived in time to see the food appear on the table again. Loki happily gobbled down what I passed to him. I was grateful his body was designed with a resilient digestive system, since so much rich food would make a normal dog sick.

To my delight, when the owls arrived carrying the mail, four of them brought a brown, wrapped package and dropped it on the table in front of me. I tore open the brown paper revealing my grow lamps. The advertising on the package promised that they could be used to grow plants or drive off vampires. I was just looking for the instructions for getting them set up when a hand gripped my arm and yanked me to my feet.

"You're in a lot of trouble," declared Filch with sadistic glee. "Special permission from the headmaster or no, a dog bites a student, it gets put down. And hopefully its owner expelled."

I drew my wand reflexively as I said, "Loki didn't bite anyone and you're not going to hurt him!"

Filch's grin widened as he snatched the wand out of my hand. "The Malfoy boy says he did, and he's got the marks on his arm to prove it. Now, come with me, and bring the animal with you."

"Where are you taking us?" I demanded.

"Your head of house needs to hear about this and decide your punishment," he replied with that nasty grin.

I had a spare red stone in my pocket. If I had to make a fight of it, the wand Filch took wouldn't make a difference. I told Loki to stay calm as Filch roughly dragged me out of the Great Hall. Hopefully I'd have a chance to plead my case and avoid violence. One way or the other, though, I wasn't going to lose my dog again.

I hadn't met Professor Flitwick yet, and these certainly weren't the best circumstances. He was even shorter than I was, and his office was set up to accommodate him, including a stepladder up to his chair.

"Mr. Filch," greeted Flitwick in a high, squeaky voice, "what brings you here?"

"This dog," Filch hammed his thumb in Loki's direction, "bit the Malfoy boy. I saw the marks on his arm myself. His little friends backed up his story."

"Loki didn't bite Malfoy and I can prove it," I said loud enough to break into the conversation.

"You're Marcus Oren, aren't you?" asked Flitwick warmly. "McGonagall's still raving about that transfiguration. Says you have a rare gift."

Filch didn't like how this conversation was going and tried to get it back on track. "That animal needs to be put down before it attacks again."

"Professor," I said, "can I show you why Loki couldn't have put those marks on Draco's arm?"

Flitwick nodded, and I gave Loki a signal. Blue alchemic light poured off the arrays hidden under the dog's brown fur. The stone under his feet broke down as the transmutation used it to add mass to Loki's body. In moment,s a small crater was in the middle of the floor of Flitwick's office, and Loki had tripped in size. His body was now armored with thick green scales, and he sported a golden leonine mane.

Faster than the eye could follow, Loki had tackled Filch to the ground, pinning his arms down under massive paws. Claws sharp enough to sever Filch's arms outright had been carefully placed where the only damage they'd do was leave a set of gouges in the stone floor. Jaws large enough and with enough bite pressure to shatter his skull were an inch from Filch's face. Loki's massive, club-like tail lazily corrected itself after counterbalancing from the pounce.

"Loki can't help but change like that," I explained. "If he'd bit Draco, Draco wouldn't still have an arm."

I retrieved my wand from where it had skidded out of Filch's hand then signaled Loki to let Filch up.

"Well, I'm convinced," declared Professor Flitwick, applauding at the display.

"That mangy thing could've killed me," complained Filch as he got to his feet.

"Loki is extremely healthy, and extremely well trained," I said, running my fingers through the fur of his golden mane. "You weren't in any danger."

"Perhaps you ought to find out what really bit the Malfoy boy," suggested Flitwick. "And make sure he sees Madam Pomfrey."

Filch grumbled and left.

"I'm sorry about your floor," I said, glancing at the crater Loki'd left transforming.

"That?" replied Flitwick. "Think nothing of it. Hardly the worst damage this office has suffered over the years." Professor Flitwick drew his wand, pointed it at the hole and called out, "Repairo!" The floor smoothed over as if Loki had never made that hole.

"Do you have a spell for cleaning up the leftover material when he changes back?" I asked.

When Flitwick nodded, I stroked Loki soothingly and blue light poured from between his armored scales. He shrank down, leaving a pile of organic residue, and emerged once again as my floppy eared brown dog.

"Evanesco!" called out Flitwick and the residue vanished. "Have you introduced that extraordinary dog to our groundskeeper Rubeus Hagrid? He has an exceptional fondness for animals like that."

"I'll do that," I said.

"Now, if I'm not mistaken, you're in my next charms class. Why don't you come along with me?"

* * *

After taking attendance, Professor Flitwick demonstrated a charm to make objects levitate. I'd apparently have time to figure out how to do that with alchemy, as he had the class set down our wands and practice pronouncing the incantation. As he corrected our emphasis, Flitwick told stories about wizards who mispronounced their spells.

Next up was Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Quirrel was a nervous young man with a large purple turban and a stutter that got worse when he talked about dark creatures and curses. He was in no real condition to correct anyone's pronunciation of curses or countercurses, so instead he assigned readings and hoped no one had questions. I ended up using the period to work out how to transmute some of the material inside a person's nose to pure histamine, to emulate a runny nose hex the book mentioned.

* * *

Defense was my last class for the day, so I took Loki outside to play and wait for Sloth. Draco found us first. Crabe and Goyle were flanking him. I gave Loki a signal to stay out of whatever happened.

"There's the mudblood and his dog," said Draco to his goons. "I don't know how you convinced Filch that flea-bitten mutt of yours was innocent, but-"

"But nothing," I interrupted. "Did you fake those bite marks yourself to frame Loki? Well, you failed. It's over."

"I think we still have business," said Draco. Crabe cast a sideways glance at where Loki was laying and watching before he moved with Goyle to surround me.

"Loki won't harm a hair on your head without my say so," I told Crabe. "And I'd rather keep this between us. So do what you're going to do with me, but I see you make one move on Loki, I'll rip off your legs and feed them to you."

"Big talk for a foreign mudblood," taunted Draco. "You think you can make good on it when it's three on one?"

I shook my head. "As long as it stays three on one, you don't need to find out."

At a signal from Draco, Goyle grabbed my arm and tried to twist it behind my back. My arm didn't move. It was nice being the inhuman monster whit superhuman strength. I extended my other arm out to Crabe.

"You want to try?" I asked with a smirk.

At a signal from Draco, Crabe took the outstretched arm and tried to twist it behind me. Slowly, so as not to injure Goyle, I raise the arm he was wrestling with until it matched the one I'd offered Crabe.

"Now that your goons have me restrained, do you feel safe enough to try a punch?" I asked.

Draco signaled Crabe and Goyle, who ceased their futile efforts to pin me. Then Draco said, "Scrapping like a muggle, this is beneath my dignity. I challenge you to a proper wizard's duel."

"I refuse," I said simply. "I've got nothing to prove to you."

"Maybe instead we'll go see that little Hufflepuff girl," Draco sneered.

I laughed at him. "Good luck with that. She isn't near as shy about throwing a punch as I am."

Draco, Crabe, and Goyle scurried off, and I got back to chasing Loki around the yard while we waited for Sloth. She arrived a few minutes later.

"Are you okay, Greed?" she asked at once. "After you got grabbed by Filch this morning, no one knew what happened to you."

"Remember Draco? The blond kid from the train? He tried to get Loki in trouble as payback. If he shows up with his goons, try not to hurt them too bad. We don't want to get expelled."

"I think I can manage that," she said. "Other than Filch, how was your day?"

"It was pretty good, Filch included," I told her. "Professor Flitwick suggested I show Loki off to the groundskeeper once I showed him Draco was lying. I was going to go after dinner. Want to come?"

"I'd love to," said Sloth.

* * *

The groundskeeper lived in a small wooden house on the far side of the grounds. Loki trotted alongside Sloth and I as we made our way out there. A heavy crossbow leaned against the wall near the door. I knocked.

Loud barks came from inside the house, and Loki responded in kind, which further excited the dog inside.

"Hang on," called Hagrid. "Back, Fang. Back."

"Loki, quiet," I ordered, and my companion silenced himself. His tail was still wagging.

The door opened, and the enormous man with the tick black beard opened the door, holding a dog slightly larger than Loki in his current form, by its collar.

"Hello," said Hagrid. "Something I can do for you?"

"Professor Flitwick said you were an animal lover," I said. "He thought you'd like to meet my dog, Loki."

A smile formed under Hagrid's thick beard, and he said, "Come in."

Sloth, Loki, and I stepped inside the one room cabin, and Hagrid released Fang. The big dog practically tackled Sloth and I, planting slippy wet kisses on our faces before he started circling and sniffing at Loki.

"Thanks for coming," Hagrid said. "Fang's been so lonely since Fluffy left. Can I get you some tea?"

"Thank you. My name is Sloth by the way," she introduced herself.

"And I'm Greed," I added.

"Everyone calls me Hagrid," he replied companionably as he started a fire for the tea. "You're first year students, aren't you?"

We nodded.

"How're you liking your classes?" he asked, making conversation as the dogs got to know each other.

"I've never had so much homework," said Sloth.

"Yeah, that'll just get worse as you go on," warned Hagrid. "Just wait until it's time to take your OWLs."

"Our whats?" I asked.

"Ah, you're muggleborn students, aren't you?"

"That's right," I said.

"Ain't nothing wrong with that. Way I hear it, the two top students in transfiguration this year are muggleborns."

"So, OWLs?" I asked while Sloth snickered at my embarrassment.

"Oh yeah," said Hagrid. "In your fifth year, the Ministry sends someone down to test you on all the subjects you study. The better your OWLs, the more jobs you can do when you leave Hogwarts."

"If that happens in fifth year," asked Sloth, "what are the next two years for?"

"That's to get ready for your NEWTs."

"Another test?" I guessed.

Hagrid nodded and shoved a cup of tea at Sloth and I. We accepted and drank. It was a strong tea. Hagrid offered some hard biscuits with raisins that went well with the tea. I was, however, pretty sure they were too hard for a human jaw.

While we had tea, I noticed a newspaper clipping on a table. It was about the Gringotts breakin that had been mentioned while we were being interrogated in relation to the Philosopher's Stone.

"Gringotts is a bank," I said. "Do they buy gold?"

"Of course they buy gold at Gringotts," said Hagrid. "What do you think they make galleon coins out of?"

"They mint the coins at Gringotts?" asked Sloth.

"That's right," said Hagrid. "You two find a big lump of gold somewhere?"

"Just trying to get my bearings," I said. "We just found out about all this a few days ago."

"Ah, you're the exchange students Dumbledore let in late. McGonagall gave him an earful about that. Great man, Albus Dumbledore."

"Thank you for the tea," I said, returning his cup. Then I smiled. "I think Professor Flitwick wanted me to show you Loki's big trick. Is there a place in the yard you don't care gets messed up?"

Hagrid led us and Fang out toward a torn up area behind his house. At my signal, Loki transformed into his green scaled, gold maned chimera form. Fang bolted back into the house whimpering in terror.

"Ruddy coward," commented Hagrid. "You are gorgeous." He ruffled Loki's mane and pulled up his lips to admire his teeth. "I don't think I've ever seen anything like you before. Where'd you find him at?"

"Half starved in an abandoned lab," I told him. "We've been inseparable ever since."

"He is just a sweetheart, isn't he?" said Hagrid.

"Flitwick was right about you," I said. "He said you'd be happy to meet him."

* * *

It was dark by the time I got back to Ravenclaw tower. Fang had come back after Loki changed back, and the two dogs had played until late.

"What is in the middle of the middle, and the end of the end?" asked the brass eagle knocker guarding the door.

I groaned and asked Loki, "I don't suppose you know this one?"

In response, he laid down on the stairs, resting his head on his folded paws.

"Didn't think so," I sighed, then focused on the riddle. A moment later, I said, "The letter 'D'" and the door opened.

The other students had gone to bed. I was about to go up to the dorm myself when I noticed one of my grow lamps that arrived at breakfast hidden partway behind a sofa. I sighed again and set to work searching the common room for the rest of them. I'd just finished securing the last of them in my trunk when it was time to get up and go down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

When I caught sight of the Ravenclaw boy who'd been giving me trouble the other day, I greeted him, saying, "Thanks for bringing up my growth lamps yesterday. Filch might've confiscated them if you'd just left them there."

Then I headed down for breakfast, getting lost only twice, and stuck for a few minutes at a door that opened once I asked politely. I ended up arriving around the same time as the other Ravenclaws. I left it mysterious why I was so awake, alert, and cheerful.

* * *

Today was a full day of not having to worry about my wand. Herbology class was this morning in the greenhouse, then a long free period, since astronomy was scheduled for midnight. Once the Herbology class let out, I went to the school library looking for anything I could find on the school's construction and floor plan.

The librarian, Madam Pince, proved more concerned with keeping the books safe than she did about anyone finding anything, so I was left to navigate the foreign filing system on my own. That was a particular problem, since the Hogwarts library eclipsed the State Alchemist's library in Central, even before you factored in the roped off restricted section. As a result, it wasn't until dinner time that I managed to verify that the school didn't have any corridors or passageways running under the Quidditch field.

I managed to catch Sloth at the entrance to the Great Hall and let her know to meet me out in the Quidditch field an hour before bed. Then I got Loki fed and tasted some of the more appetizing morsels myself. The Ravenclaw boy, who's name I was deliberately avoiding learning at this point, left me alone to eat in peace.

I headed up to the Ravenclaw tower after eating, answered the knocker's riddle, "What is better than the best and worse than the worst?" with "Nothing," retrieved my growth lamps, and waited in the common room with my feet up on them reading the directions and making sure I knew what I was doing. Other students came and went. Some headed up for the dormitories to get some sleep. Others hung around in the common room doing homework or socializing. Eventually, it was time to meet Sloth. I gathered my lamps and headed out.

Quidditch trails wouldn't be held until next week, so no one was holding practices yet. In the black school robes, it was hard picking Sloth out of a crowd. She usually found me thanks to Loki. This time, though, she was waiting alone, leaning against one of the poles that held up the elevated rings.

"I verified there aren't any structures under here," I told Sloth. "Nothing's even close. We should be safe to set up here."

"What're we going to do when they're actually playing Quidditch here?" Sloth asked.

"We travel underground and avoid the crowds," I said. She smiled.

I walked to the center of the field. As good a landmark as any, and I stomped my foot. The transmutation circle on the bottom of my shoe glowed blue, and a tunnel opened in he grass nearby, accompanied by a few blue sparks. Sloth climbed down first and I handed her down the growth lamps. Loki went down after, Sloth helping him down the carved granite ladder I'd transmuted. Finally, I made my way down, stopping halfway down to point my wand at the tunnel wall and seal the entrance. It ought to be impossible to detect from the surface. Even the grass would be back in place.

As I feared, the electric lights I'd transmuted out of trace elements in the soil didn't work. Sloth held up one of the growth lamps for me while I made my way to the generator room. I clapped my hands and touched the wall. The entire structure glowed blue as transmutation circles drew themselves along the walls and ceiling. The generator itself reconfigured into a small, cylindrical tank. Then, the light of the transmutation faded, leaving us again with just the lamp Sloth was carrying. I dropped a red stone from my pocket into the tank and the arrays all lit up again and stayed glowing blue.

"You just love to show off," teased Sloth.

"The enchantments on the castle reminded me of Hohenheim's arrays protecting the Stone," I said. "These'll stave off or repair minor cracks and damage, refresh the air, and shed light while they're doing it."

"How long'll that stone last powering all that?" asked Sloth.

"I don't know," I admitted. "But we can turn it all off when we leave like this." I poked a single dark circle with my fingertip, which flared blue for an instant, then the lab fell dark. I touched the array again and the lights came back on.

"And the growth lamps you bought can stay on the whole time," said Sloth. "This should work."

"I'll set up the lamps while you plant the seeds," I offered. We left Loki in the living area, passed through the airlock, and started setting things up in the garden area. Soon, everything was ready for us to order the chemicals we needed and start making red stones.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Attending high school, even a magical one, is a new experience for both our travelers. Fortunately, with their hidden lab, they have a place where they can let their hair down.


	3. Chapter 4: Further Lessons

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 4) Further Lessons  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

Sloth and I parted ways, and I found my way through the school to the astronomy tower. It was a subject that had never particularly interested me. When I was following Leto, the sun was a god to be worshiped, and when I studied alchemy, it was a mass of burning hydrogen too distant to do anything with. It still wasn't particularly interesting, but I'd managed to study actually objectionable material before, so I could get through unstimulating. Besides which, I still wasn't sure how much I'd need wandless classes like this to bolster my grade average once things got more serious in Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense.

The next day was charms and transfiguration again. This time Flitwick had the whole class practice wand grips and motions. In transfiguration, I got the chance to see what a partially successful transfiguration looked like. Between the two classes, it became very clear that I couldn't afford to make mistakes. Partially successful results would be just as difficult to emulate with alchemy as successful ones, and the teachers would notice if my wand movement or pronunciation were off but the effect still happened. Assimilating the textbooks with a red stone didn't seem like such a cheat once it became clear I'd have to do twice the work, both working out the alchemy and knowing the right words and wand movements anyway.

The following day, after Herbology, was the class I'd been looking forward to the most, potions. Firstly, because it was a joint session with the Hufflepuffs, meaning Sloth and I would be in class together. Secondly, because it was a wandless subject that still produced magical results.

Potions was held in the dungeons, and the classroom was filled with equipment. Each desk had a heating element for the cauldron and various strange ingredients were on display on the walls. Sloth and I found each other quickly and took a seat together. I caught sight of a couple of the Hufflepuff girls pointing at me and whispering, while my housemate who'd been giving me trouble pointedly looked away.

"What's that about?" I asked Sloth, indicating the Hufflepuff girls.

"Oh, it's nothing," said Sloth. "I've just been telling them all how smart, brave, and handsome my boyfriend is, and now they get to see some of that for themselves."

Our conversation was cut short as Professor Snape swept into the room. His greasy black hair hung, framing his face. He regarded the class with a perceptive eye and a vague disdain, as though being in the room with us was an annoying inconvenience. He reminded me of my former commanding officer, the Swarm Alchemist, not in appearance, but certainly in attitude. He took attendance, not seeming interested in whether we were there, but more looking for an excuse to not have to deal with our presence in the future.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion making," said Professor Snape when attendance was taken. His voice was low, as though he didn't particularly care whether we heard him or not. This speech was more for him than for us. "As there is little foolish wand waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death. If you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

I'd already been looking forward to this subject, and I found it impossible not to be swept up in Snape's obvious reverence for his subject. The class was dead silent, hanging on his every word. Only the last remark contained a hint of his previously obvious contempt for us. That contempt was back in full force when his gaze suddenly snapped toward me.

"Oren!" he said sharply. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

The potions textbook mentioned an advanced potion called the draught of living death. Supposed to be very difficult to brew, those were the ingredients mentioned in connection with it. "Either a sleeping potion or a poison, depending on how much of each ingredient and how they're mixed," I replied.

Snape's eyes narrowed as he regarded me. "Those two ingredients for the base of a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the draught of living death." He regarded me for a long moment before snapping, "Abbot! Where would you look if I asked you to find me a beozar?"

Hannah Abott, one of the Hufflepuff girls, froze like a cornered animal. As Snape's disapproving gaze pressed on her, she eventually managed to squeak out, "I don't know."

"For your information," said Snape to the class, "a beozar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat, and it will save you from most poisons. Corner! What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

The Ravenclaw boy who'd been giving me trouble squirmed under Snape's gaze. "I don't know, Professor," he said.

"Thought getting sorted into Ravenclaw meant you were already so clever you didn't need to open your book? Monkshood and wolfsbane are the same plant, which also goes by the name aconite. Why aren't you all copying this down?"

There was a flurry of quills scratching against parchment as the class noted down what Professor Snape had been saying. Next he put a recipe on the board for a potion to cure boils and set us to work brewing it in teams of two. As it was slightly different from the recipe om the textbook, I copied it down in my notes before getting started.

It was like my first attempt at alchemy all over again. I took care to follow the directions precisely, crushing snake fangs, stewing slugs in the bubbling cauldron, and carefully measuring out the dried nettles and porcupine quills. If this worked, a whole new world of possibilities would open up for me.

Snape breathed down everyone's neck as they attempted the potion, offering a string of criticisms. Sloth and I took things slow, looking up each time the professor spoke correcting a student and making sure we weren't making the same mistakes. Finally, the brew was completed and I stared at the finished liquid.

Snape walked down the isles, looking over our potions and pronouncing them successes or failures. He waived his wand over the cauldrons as he graded them, causing their contents to vanish. I got the impression he was giving my cauldron extra scrutiny, but eventually he pronounced my attempt a success, flicked his wand, and my first potion disappeared. 

* * *

"I wish I'd gotten to see it working," I said to Sloth as we walked together toward Dumbledore's office. I'd secured directions from a prefect that morning.

"That wasn't really a fair question he asked you at the start of class," Sloth noted. "We aren't supposed to be doing that potion until sixth year."

"Maybe not," I agreed, "but I'm not going to let him spoil this class for me. I think I'll brew another one back in the common room, give myself some boils, and see if it works."

We stopped in front of a stone gargoyle guarding the passage to the headmaster's office. Retrieving the letter Dumbledore had sent me from my potions book, I read the password, "Gum drop," to the gargoyle who animated and stepped aside. Sloth and I stepped through the passage and on to a rotating spiral staircase that brought us up to the door at the top. Sloth knocked and it swung open.

"How have you been enjoying your first week at Hogwarts?" asked Dumbledore from behind his desk. The room was decorated by portraits of witches and wizards who were all snoozing in their chairs. Small devices of unknown function were set on tables around the room. Dumbledore himself was dressed in purple robes and rose to greet us. I recognized the Sorting Hat on a rack. A strange red plumed bird rested on a perch on Dumbledore's desk.

"I've already learned a lot," I said. "I hope we'll be able to stay longer."

"What exactly is occlumency?" asked Sloth. "You mentioned we'd need lessons, but that was all."

"Ah, to the point, then. Pity," said Dumbledore. "Occlumency is a branch of magic concerned with protecting the mind from external penetration and attack. I've made arrangements to teach you this skill to prevent others from gaining the knowledge to create a Philosopher's Stone from your minds."

"What's involved in that?" I asked, nervously fingering my false wand.

Dumbledore sighed and said, "Regretably, the training process can get rather intimate. I will make use of legilimency to penetrate your mental defenses repeatedly, both to help you learn to recognize an attack and to test the success of your defenses. Because of the nature of the training, your defenses will be weaker than they are now during the training, until the defenses can be built up. I would advise you avoid direct eye contact with anyone until you're past that phase, as that makes legilimency easier still to perform against you."

"So, you'll be reading our minds," I said.

"Legilimency is somewhat more complex than that," said Dumbledore, "but in essence, yes. It can also be used to sort through your memories, or even influence your actions, but the methods of defense are the same in any case."

"You used it when we met," noted Sloth.

"To verify your story," admitted Dumbledore. "I intruded on your privacy no deeper than was necessary. You do recall my surprise at your shape shifting and when you mentioned you knew how to make the Stone."

"And we can expect similar respect for our privacy while we're training?" I asked.

"Of course," said Dumbledore seriously. "The point of these lessons is to enable you to keep your secrets. I have no desire to pry them from you. Some intrusion is necessary, but I am a skilled legilimense, if I may say so, and should be able to notice if a thought or memory should be private before examining it further."

"What do we have to do?" I asked, gripping my wand.

"Occlumency is a purely mental skill," replied Dumbledore. "It wouldn't be much use if you needed a wand at the ready to use it. The simplest technique involves blanking your mind, silencing your thoughts in response to an intrusion. I'd like both of you to practice emptying your minds before you go to bed each evening. Once you've mastered this skill, we will move on to more advanced techniques like projecting false thoughts."

"We can do that," I said to Sloth, who nodded.

"While the actual lessons are something of a one on one affair," noted Dumbledore, "I thought it best if you were both here to offer a measure of support and security to one another, since as I said the process can be difficult. Who would like to start?"

"I will," Sloth volunteered. "I've had some bad experiences with mental intrusions, and if something goes badly, I want Greed at 100% to help."

I squeezed Sloth's hand reassuringly as Dumbledore locked eyes with Sloth and she began to squirm uncomfortably.

"Regrettably, for you to learn what an intrusion feels like, these initial experiences can be neither subtle nor gentle," said Dumbledore as he broke eye contact.

"How are you?" I asked Sloth.

"I'm okay," she said after a moment's self-assessment.

"Remember, try to clear your mind when you feel the intrusion," instructed Dumbledore. "Think of nothing and don't allow emotions to come to the surface."

After half a dozen attempts, Dumbledore called a halt. Sloth looked shaky and tired. Our nature preserved us from physical fatigue, but we were still people when you get down to it, and just as susceptible to emotional exhaustion.

"My turn to watch over you," said Sloth. She squeezed my hand and I locked eyes with Dumbledore.

The experience of having another consciousness rifling through my mind was vaguely similar to being exposed to the Gate. Images flashed before my mind's eye and information came unbidden. The first difference was that none of what I was seeing was new, all of it being dredged up from my memory. The second was how slow and gentle the process was. Dumbledore said he wouldn't be able to be gentle with these early attempts, but his legilimency was like butterfly wings gently caressing the skin compared with the sledge hammer that was seeing the Gate.

I tried to clear my mind, shut out the images, and expel Dumbledore, but I wasn't at all practiced at controlling my thoughts. The skills I'd developed so I'd still be able to act within the Gate helped a little, but it wasn't enough. The second time Dumbledore intruded, the memories were accompanied by thoughts of fear and hopelessness. I saw myself a useless pile of misshapen organs again. I saw Sloth lying motionless on the ground with empty eyes.

Again and again, the intrusions came, and each time it got harder to even try to block it out. Eventually, Dumbledore called a halt.

"We will hold these sessions once a week," said Dumbledore. "That should give you time to practice and recover."

I felt as shaky as Sloth looked, but I managed to nod my assent.

"Now that that's settled, there is another matter I'd like your assistance with. I am preparing a safe location for your Philosopher's Stone. As it is your property, I thought you might want to look over the security."

"Aren't we supposed to be vulnerable to legilimency until we actually master some of the occlumency lessons?" asked Sloth. "Why would you want to tell us details about the security now?"

"Because only a handful of those details have been finalized," responded Dumbledore. "It is my intention that no one involved with protecting the Stone knows everything that will be protecting it." 

* * *

Dumbledore led Sloth, Loki, and I to the forbidden third floor corridor and opened the door with a wave of his wand.

"A guardian will be placed in this room, which I've asked our groundskeeper to remove while I show you the hall."

"Fluffy," I said, nodding.

If Dumbledore was surprised I knew the name, he didn't show it. He merely led us to a trap door.

"A thief will next need to drop down blindly into the next chamber, where additional protections can restrain, incapacitate, or kill."

We jumped down together and Dumbledore used a spell to slow our descent. Then he led us through a series of rooms, each of which would be guarded by a different set of spells worked by a different member of the faculty. We stopped in the final room where the Stones themselves would be kept.

"Do you have any thoughts?" asked Dumbledore.

"One," said Sloth. "How will you make the thief go through all that instead of going this way?" She stepped through the back wall and then back into the final chamber.

"Or if the thief can't duplicate Sloth's abilities," I added, "stop him from doing this?" I kicked the wall Sloth had just passed through and opened an archway leading to the unguarded hallway beyond using the transmutation circle on the bottom of my shoe.

"What do you recommend?" asked Dumbledore.

"I can set up some alchemy arrays that'll reinforce and repair the walls," I suggested. When Dumbledore nodded, I clapped and touched a wall. Just below the surface, I scribed alchemic diagrams throughout hte protected halls similar to those I'd used in my lab. These were hidden, didn't need to worry about freshening the air, but were otherwise identical. Sloth dropped a red stone in the container in the corner of the final room, and the alchemy activated, closing the arch I'd opened up in a wave of blue light.

"This will be a welcome addition to our defenses," acknowledged Dumbledore cheerfully.

"You do have something to keep whoever it is from just teleporting in and out, right?" asked Sloth.

"No witch or wizard can apparate or disapparate on Hogwarts grounds. The wards are lowered in a specific area to facilitate apparition lessons, but even those are restored after the classes are concluded."

"The stone powering my protections will run out of power eventually," I mentioned. "I can make more, but I need certain ingredients."

Dumbledore helped me address an owl to a suitable supplier after leading us out of the corridor. With luck, the red water precursors would arrive sometime next week. 

* * *

The door knocker for the Ravenclaw common room asked, "What always drinks and wears a mail that doesn't clink?" I still hadn't fully recovered mentally from the occlumency lessons, and I ended up drawing a blank. I just wanted to get in, brew my potion, and test its results.

While I sat on the steps trying to get my exhausted mind to focus on the riddle, a group of first year Ravenclaw boys came up the stairs. They saw me waiting there and laughed.

"What's the matter, Oren?" sneered the one who'd been giving me trouble since the start of term. "Can't use your brain if there isn't a teacher to show off to?"

"The name's Greed, Corner," I shot back, annoyed at having remembered his last name from Snape's class. "And it isn't my fault you don't know what wolfsbane is."

He pointedly turned his back on me and approached the door. On hearing the riddle, he laughed harder. "A fish," he told the door, which swung open at his answer. I went to go in when the group of boys interposed their bodies into my path and closed the door behind them.

They clearly assumed I'd answered wrong already and would stay locked out. Instead, I just gave the door the correct answer and it opened for me. Ignoring their group, I crossed the common room and set up my potions equipment.

I decided to brew two potions, one using Snape's recipe and one using the recipe from the book. Loki curled up beside my chair as I worked, his constant companionship made it easier to ignore the snide comments about being a teacher's pet while I brewed my potions. Loki wouldn't let them sneak up behind me and cause problems while I was brewing. At length, I had two bottled potions that, if potion making didn't somehow require the same kind of magical power that made wands work, would cure boils.

"Hey, Corner," I called across the common room when I was done, "you want to give me a hand with something?"

He and his friends consulted, then he swaggered over toward me, the others hanging back to watch. "Why would I help you?" he asked loudly.

"How often do you think you'll get the chance to jinx me with no consequences?" I replied. "I've got two boil curing potions I want to test out. What do you say we both jinx each other with boils and get it out of our system, then drink the potions together like friends? I'll even let you pick which potion."

"What sort of trick are you trying to pull?" he asked.

"If you're scared about how much the boils'll hurt, I'm sure I can find someone else who can take it."

That did the job. He whipped out his wand and called out, "Furnunculus!" I made no move to dodge and took the curse in the face. A handful of inflamed pustules broke out on my face.

"That's the spirit, Furnunculus!" I said, my wand glowing blue for an instant as I transmuted a few patches of skin on his face, and caused boils to appear roughly in proportion to what he'd done to me. Then I turned my back and snatched up my two potion bottles. "This one uses the recipe we learned in potions today," I told him as he tried not to wince from the painful pustules on his face. "This one uses the recipe from the textbook. Which one do you want?"

"I don't care," he said.

I shrugged and handed him the potion brewed by the textbook's instructions. We both drank at the same time. I felt relief the instant I swallowed, the boils vanishing almost as quickly as they would have if I'd used my regeneration. His boils vanished more slowly, but vanish they did as I watched.

"It looks like Professor Snape's recipe is better," I said, then extended my and. "Are we good, Corner?"

After a moment's hesitation, he took my hand and said, "It's Michael."

* * *

It was Tuesday when the red water supplies arrived. Sloth and I wasted no time transporting it to our lab, getting it mixed, and putting the toxic cocktail into feeders for our crop of philosopher's flowers. I hadn't needed to replace the red stone on my wand yet, but it was a comfort to know we could replenish our stock.

In anticipation of Professor Flitwick's charms class, I'd prepared a handful of methods to levitate an object using alchemy. Those preparations were somewhat premature, since we had more theory and practice in charms before we'd be doing the actual levitation. Transfiguration continued to involve blatant violations of equivalent exchange. Fortunately, we were working with small items, so my red stone wasn't being taxed too badly.

Thursday, the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had a joint class. Flying. Madam Hooch, the instructor, had us line up and broomsticks were set on the ground next to each of us. At her instruction, we extended our right hands and commanded the broomsticks, "Up!"

Some people's broomsticks hopped off the ground toward their hand. Some people's rolled away. Sloth and I were the only ones who's broomsticks didn't move at all. While Madam Hooch went down the line, correcting everyone's hand positions and posture, Sloth got a red stone out of her pocket and cupped it in her palm, flashing it to me so I'd see and hopefully understand. I got a stone from my pocket and showed her in reply.

The next time we said, "Up!" I stomped my foot, and the broomsticks meant for Sloth and I sprang into our hands. We both watched the other students carefully, holding our red stones in our palms against the wood of the broomstick. Just like with the wands, we'd need to duplicate the effects with alchemy.

The first instruction once everyone had their brooms was to mount, kick off, fly a few feet forward, and land. Red glowing lines became fully visible on Sloth's broom as she prepared to launch. I had to focus on my alchemy, so I didn't get a good look at her array. In principle, this shouldn't be too different from what Psiren did to launch her weaponized playing cards.

I kicked off the ground, my broom glowed blue, then shot out from between my legs like a rocket, partially embedding itself into a tree. I ended up flat on my back at the starting position. Sloth had stayed with her broom, but had launched straight up in the air and was spinning as she fell to earth. She hit head first, her neck cracking sideways. She'd regenerated the injury before Madam Hooch rushed over to check on her.

"Don't kick off so hard," she instructed Sloth. "You could've broken your neck."

Michael Corner meanwhile helped me pull my broomstick out of the tree, saying, "So, there is a subject you aren't a natural in."

"I'm not a natural in any of them," I retorted as the broom finally came loose. "I'm just putting in a lot of effort."

"Sure," he said, rolling his eyes as Madam Hooch came over to correct my grip.

Disastrous as that was, I was amazed no one suspected anything more than incompetence. Other people had problems and accidents too, but Sloth and I were clearly at the bottom of the class. While Madam Hooch adjusted our posture and grip, I was busy adjusting my alchemy. By the end of the lesson, I still hadn't managed that short flight, but I was getting better at calibrating the forces involved. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
I'm trying not to contradict anything established in the books. I am ignoring some of the material that was never in the books themselves, in this case, the mention Rowling made in an interview that potions requires the use of a wand. Likewise, I'm adding details where things are ambiguous in order for them to fit with my story, like the details we see about the brooms both here and in later chapters.


	4. Chapter 6: New Friends

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 6) New Friends  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

It became clear that we'd be brewing a new potion each week in Professor Snape's class and that I'd be accumulating a large number of recipes. The mixing instructions were counter intuitive compared to everything I knew about the chemistry of the ingredients, but this clearly worked on an entirely different set of principals. The whole point was to learn them.

Occlumency lessons showed a distinct pattern. Each week, our defenses were stronger, and it took Dumbledore longer to batter them down. We always left the class exhausted and drained, but objective measures showed we were making progress. The touch of Dumbledore's legelimency was subtler and harder to detect each time, but it kept pace with our growing awareness of our own thought process.

The flying lessons continued to be a problem. At the heart of the issue was that broomstick enchantments had been developed incrementally over the course of centuries, and I needed to duplicate each of the using alchemy. And once I'd gotten the broom to hover, elevate, descend, move forward, turn, speed, slow, and stop, I also had to learn how to keep my grip and balance on the thing like I'd been supposed to be learning all along. Sloth and I got together frequently to compare notes and work on improving the design of the broomstick flying alchemy, but we were consistently a couple weeks behind the rest of the class.

The red stone powering Sloth's wand burnt out and had to be replaced during her transfiguration class early in the third week. Our new crop came in a week after that. We weren't going to sue them up nearly fast enough to run out.

The work I'd done on the broomstick flying meant that by the time Professor Flitwick deemed our wand form and pronunciation good enough to attempt to levitate objects, I was able to do so effortlessly. The feathers we were practicing with bobbed and flowed at my direction. Professor Flitwick's extensive practice with us beforehand meant that I wasn't the only one who's feature levitated on the first try, and by the end of the class, everyone had managed it.

At dinner that evening, I was enjoying the novel experience of having succeeded at a spell and not been bullied out of jealousy. I managed to make a few good trades for chocolate frog cards, which I'd been collecting to help give me a handle on what was considered normal and what was impressive. The famous witch and wizard cards were a better place to start than our history of magic class.

Just then, Professor Quirrell burst into the Great Hall. "Troll in the dungeons," he gasped. "Thought you ought to know." At which point, he promptly collapsed.

Dumbledore wasted no time. He ordered the prefects to escort the students back to their house common rooms and the faculty prepared to find and deal with the threat.

As we were being gathered up, I heard one of the Gryffindor boys say, "She doesn't know about the troll!"

Loki and I slipped away from the Ravenclaw prefects in the confusion and got Sloth away from the Hufflepuffs. "There's a student out there somewhere alone with the troll on the loose," I explained once we were away from the group. Sloth nodded and the three of us set out to find the troll or the student, hopefully before they found each other. The defense textbook had noted trolls had a fondness for human flesh.

Loki picked up a scent quickly and bolted down the halls. Sloth and I sprinted to keep up with the dog. We all picked up the pace when a scream echoed down the corridor. We rounded a corner and saw two first year boys, one with black hair and glasses, the other red haired, panicking and fumbling with a key trying to get a door open.

Sloth took me by the hand and touched the back of Loki's neck, and the three of us passed through the two boys and the locked door, emerging into a bathroom. The troll towered over us. Hermione was trapped in a corner and the troll was moving toward her.

"Hold it right there!" I yelled at the troll. The defense books said trolls were stupid, but it was wearing clothing and had a wooden club, so it had to have some intelligence. It ignored me and continued to move toward Hermione.

The lock clicked open and the two boys rushed in. While they took in the situation, Loki growled at the troll and transformed into his chimera form, breaking down a crater of floor and part of a stall door to fuel his change. The troll proved equally oblivious to animal threat displays as it has been to human speech.

Sloth sprinted at the troll and collided with one of its legs. She'd misjudged its composition, so her powers failed to let her pass through its body. Instead, she fell to the floor from the awkward impact.

Determined to get the troll's attention off the mortal humans in the room, I drew my wand and pointed it at one of the sinks. With a simple transmutation of the water and metal in the plumbing, I caused the sink to launch itself at the troll, impacting it like an artillery shell. Porcelain shattered on impact and one of the creature's arms was hanging limp and bloodied at its side.

The troll turned away from Hermione in a rage, but proved incapable of accurately determining who had just hurt it. It turned its attention to Sloth, who was closest to it and raised its massive club. The dark haired boy rushed into harm's way, throwing himself over Sloth in an attempt to shield her with his own body. It was as noble as it was foolish. He survived only because Sloth used her powers to cause the club to pass through both of them and strike the floor beneath.

Loki leapt onto the troll's back, his enormous claws digging into the troll's flesh and supporting hte weight of the massive chimera. The troll's magical nature made it stronger and more durable than a creature with its body plan should be, but magic or no, Loki was deliberately designed as a living weapon. Powerful jaws drove razor sharp fangs into the troll's good arm. Roaring in pain, the troll dropped its club.

"Windgardium Leviosa!" called out the red haired boy, using the incantation for the levitation charm we'd all just been allowed to try in class earlier that day. He hovered the troll's massive club over the creature and dropped it on its head. Loki leapt off its back as the troll's eyes rolled back in its head and it collapsed unconscious on the floor.

The dark haired boy standing over Sloth was trembling. He examined his body not grasping why he wasn't dead. The red haired boy was staring at the unconscious troll, seeming processing that he'd beaten the twelve foot tall monstrosity.

"Is it dead?" asked Hermione, taking a halting step toward the troll.

"I don't think so," said the black haired boy. "I think it's just been knocked out."

"I don't want it moving when it comes around," I said. I pointed my wand at the stone floor beneath the creature. Stone bindings wrapped around the troll's limbs and midsection. The battle over, Loki relaxed, glowed blue, and shed his extra mass as a pile of organic residue, returning to the form of a floppy eared brown dog.

"I don't want to be rude when you helped us fight that thing," said the red haired boy, "but who or what are you people?"

"I'm Sloth. This is Greed and Loki," she introduced us. When the sound of running footsteps echoed from the hallways Sloth hastily added, "We'll explain everything later."

Professors McGonagall, Snape, and Quirrell burst into the room. Quirrell clutched at his chest and sat down, whimpering. Snape examined the troll. McGonagall spoke in an absolute fury.

"What on earth were you thinking of? You're lucky you weren't killed. Why aren't you in your dormitory?"

Snape shot a look at the black haired boy, then his gaze shifted to me. I could feel the intrusion of a legelimency attempt, and I reflexively blanked my mind like Dumbledore had been teaching Sloth and I. The intrusion repelled, Snape narrowed his eyes and stared at me darkly.

"Please, Professor McGonagall," said Hermione in a small voice, drawing attention to herself, "they were looking for me."

"Miss Granger!" exclaimed McGonagall.

"I went looking for the troll because I-I thought I could deal with it on my own-you know, because I've read all about them.

"If they hadn't found me, I'd be dead now. Sloth and Harry distracted it while Ron and Greed knocked it out. They didn't have time to come and fetch anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived."

"Well- in that case..." began McGonagall, visibly switching gears as she looked over the five of us. "Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?"

Loki pushed his head into Hermione's hand in a comforting gesture as McGonagall continued. "Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this. I'm very disappointed in you. If you're not hurt at all, you'd better get off to Gryffindor tower. Students are finishing the feat in their houses."

Hermione left and Loki returned to my side. McGonagall addressed the rest of us.

"Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full grown mountain troll. You each win five points for your respective houses. Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this. You may go."

We all left silently and separated for our respective house common rooms. Sloth and I would have to meet up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione the next day and explain what they just saw us do against the troll. One thing pressed on me as I climbed the steps to Ravenclaw tower. Snape had tried to read my mind. 

* * *

The three Gryffindors were waiting for Sloth and I outside the Great Hall when we went down for breakfast. We went to an empty classroom out of earshot of students and portraits alike.

"Wordless magic is way beyond our grade level," noted Hermione, starting the conversation.

"And I've never even heard of a spell like the one you used to save Harry," added Ron.

Sloth and I looked at one another for a moment, then I said, "That's because it wasn't magic we used to fight the troll. It was alchemy."

"What's alchemy?" asked Harry.

"Alchemy is the science of understanding matter, breaking it down into its component elements, and rebuilding it as something else," I said.

"You can't do what you did with the troll using alchemy," said Hermione. "It's like potions. You need a lab, a work space, ingredients, measuring tools. You can't just wave a wand and do alchemy. Even Dumbledore couldn't do it."

I knelt down and drew a diagram on the floor with a piece of chalk. "This is called a transmutation circle. It was one of the most important discoveries in the history of alchemy." I dropped a quill in the center of it and touched the array. Blue light poured from the circle and the quill disintegrated. Its material recombined into a large reptile scale. "The transmutation circle eliminated the need for large lab equipment for most applications of alchemic research and paved the way for modern alchemy."

"I've never heard of any of this," said Ron.

"That's because the transmutation circle was never discovered in this world," I said.

"We're explorers from another world," Sloth clarified. "Dumbledore's letting us attend Hogwarts as a favor."

"Did Fred and George put you up to this?" asked Ron skeptically.

"They saved our lives," reminded Harry. "Besides, is this story really that weird?"

"Thanks for trying to save my life by the way," said Sloth. "That was very brave. Don't do it again. Greed and I aren't human and we're a lot tougher to kill than you are."

"What do you mean, you aren't human?" asked Harry.

"Have you ever heard of a homunculus?" asked Sloth.

"An artificial person," said Hermione instantly. "Really advanced alchemy. Parcelus Van Hohenheim was the first wizard to successfully create one."

"We can get into more details if you want," I offered, "but suffice it to say, we have the ability to regenerate from even fatal injuries. Even if the troll had smashed one of us into jelly, we'd have been perfectly fine again in a few seconds."

"You know there are rules about this sort of thing," said Ron. "Nonhumans aren't allowed to use wands."

"This isn't a wand," I said, handing mine over to him. "Go ahead. Try a spell."

"Windgardium Leviosa!" said Ron, waving my counterfeit wand to no effect.

"Those engravings are like the transmutation circle I showed you," I said, taking back my wand. "We aren't wizards. We've been using alchemy to duplicate the effects of spells. Windgardium Leviosa!"

The scale I'd transmuted as a demonstration rose into the air, supported by alchemic energy channeled through the glowing blue array on my wand.

"So, what happens now that you know?" asked Sloth.

"Dumbledore knows but the other professors don't," guessed Harry. "That's why you didn't want to explain all this last night."

Sloth and I nodded.

"I can keep a secret," offered Hermione.

"Me too," said Harry nodding.

"Friends?" said Ron, offering his hand.

"Friends," I agreed shaking it. Sloth sighed with relief.

After agreeing to meet up later, we all entered the Great Hall and went to our respective tables for breakfast. 

* * *

At our occlumency lesson, I brought up Snape's legelimency attempt to Dumbledore. That provoked a chuckle from the old wizard.

"Professor Snape was quite alarmed when he came to see me after the troll incident and mentioned your use of occlumency. I was forced to explain that I was giving you both private lessons and reassure him you weren't a threat to the school."

"Why was he trying to read my mind to begin with?" I asked.

"I should think it obvious," noted Dumbledore. "I would certainly have been curious exactly what happened that led to five first years defeating a mountain troll."

I couldn't argue with that.

"Now, your successful use of basic occlumency against Professor Snape tells me you're ready for more advanced lessons."

Dumbledore proceeded to walk us through the basics of projecting false thoughts to fool a legelimens into believing he'd penetrated your mind, only to come away with false information. As usual, Sloth went first. Partway through the lesson, something extraordinary happened.

Blue sparks of alchemic energy raced along Sloth's body. Her hair turned black, her eyes violet, and her body shrunk. She had reverted back to her four year old homunculus form. It lasted only a second before she shifted back into her appearance as a Hogwarts first year.

"What was that?" Sloth asked in alarm.

"Your body reacted to what your were doing mentally," I said. "What did you do?"

"I was trying to project that there was an army of zombies outside the door," said Sloth. "I used the memories of when we were fighting to try and add realism. I think I convinced part of myself that I still looked like I did then."

"Try a different form," I suggested.

Sloth complied, focused, and once again alchemic light ran across her body. When it finished, I was looking at a perfect duplicate of my own face. As before, Sloth reverted quickly, but we'd discovered a new application for our occlumency training. Projecting a certain belief that we looked a particular way caused our bodies to conform to that self image. After a few tries, I was able to do it too.

As before, Dumbledore continued the lesson until Sloth and I were both exhausted, demonstrating flaws in our projected thoughts and giving us insight into how any flaw in the projected persona could be sued to penetrate deeper into our true thoughts and memories. 

* * *

Having an actual wizard in on our secret made a lot of things easier. Practicing defense with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, Sloth and I could get a better idea of what the curses and jinxes we were duplicating actually did to a body. There were dozens of ways to lock a person's legs, for example, but only experiencing the curse told us whether the effect was more akin to induced muscle cramps, temporary paralysis, or the removal of the knee joint.

Since our alchemy based approximations worked on strictly physical principals, one thing that became clear was that standard countercurses wouldn't do anything to reverse our alchemy induced conditions. Likewise, the only method I was able to find to remove the leg locker curse using alchemy was to destroy my legs and grow new ones. This did allow for a general purpose alchemy based countercurse: breaking down and rebuilding whatever part of the body was targeted, but since using it on anyone but Sloth and I counted as human transmutation, it would burn through red stones quickly.

Hermione in particular seemed to delight in exploring the limits of my and Sloth's ingenuity in duplicating difficult spell effects. While the five of us were out by the Quidditch field, Hermione conjured a queer blue flame that would've baffled Roy Mustang himself. It shed light and heat, but it didn't consume fuel. It could be smothered by depriving it of oxygen, but it could be scooped up and carried around in a jar.

Sloth and I were leaning over the jar discussing a method of using alchemic manipulation of the air to keep the flame contained at a certain size and fed with a replenishing supply of hydrogen fuel when Ron elbowed me in the side. We looked up to see Snape approaching and the other three standing so as to conceal the jar of blue fire. Sloth and I fell into line with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Snape was walking with an obvious limp. Given what I'd managed to piece together about the range and scope of healing magic, that was odd. From what I'd read, only certain dark curses or creatures could inflict wounds that Madam Pomfrey couldn't mend with trivial ease. There was no legelimency attempt this time as Snape looked us over.

"What's that you've got there, Potter?"

Harry held up a book on Quidditch he'd been reading for Snape's inspection.

"Library books are not to be taken outside the school. Give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor." Snape took the book and left.

"He's just made that rule up," said Harry, staring daggers at Snape's departing back. Then a bit calmer added, "Wonder what's wrong with his leg."

"Dunno," said Ron, "but I hope it's really hurting him."

"He really hates you," said Sloth to Harry. "Limping like that, he still went out of his way to come over and give you trouble. That's real dedication to spite."

* * *

"Did you have fun playing with Ron's pet rat?" I asked Loki who was curled up at my feet in the Ravenclaw common room that night. Ron had been nervous about introducing the animals to each other. Given how viciously Ron had seen Loki fighting the troll, it was understandable. The rat, Scabbers, had been nervous at first too, but quickly warmed up to the well trained dog. In no time, Scabbers was riding on top of Loki's head, being conveyed across the yard and back.

I reached down from my comfortable chair to stroke my pet's fur. As I was paying attention to my dog, Michael Corner walked up to me.

"You've been hanging around with Harry Potter the last few days," he opened.

"Yeah, first Hufflepuff, now Gryffindor," I said sarcastically. "Now all I need is a Slytherin friend and th betrayal of my House can be complete."

"That's not what I Was going to say," snapped Michael. "I was going to ask if you'd heard about him and the war."

"Sloth filled me in on the basics," I told him. "A dark wizard named Voldemort-"

"Don't say his name," interrupted Michael in hushed tones.

"Is there some reason we're not supposed to?" I asked him. When no answer was forthcoming, I rolled my eyes and continued. "Anyway, this dark wizard killed Harry's parents, tried to kill Harry, and failed so badly no one's seen or heard from him since."

"They say You-Know-Who gave Harry that scar on his forehead." said Michael.

I shrugged. "He seems like a decent guy." I didn't feel like getting into the fact that he'd been willing to sacrifice his life for a total stranger in the fight against the troll.

My short replies and disinterested tone convinced Michael to go away. I picked a book off a nearby shelf and started reading. Assimilating information from books using red stones was quicker and more efficient, but there was something inherently realizing about being curled up in a comfy chair next to a crackling fireplace with a dog curled up at your feet, reading a book the old fashioned way. 

* * *

The next day, Sloth and I went to see our first game of Quidditch. I'd found some privacy that morning and transmuted each of us a pair of binoculars so we'd be able to see the action even if we couldn't get good seats. The match was Gryffindor versus Slytherin, so I felt no conflict in seeking out my new Gryffindor friends and cheering on their house's team alongside them.

Harry was nowhere to be seen, but we found Ron and Hermione up on the highest row of the stands with Neville and a couple other Gryffindors.

"Have you seen Harry?" Sloth asked before I could.

"You'll see him pretty soon," said Ron mysteriously.

"We made this banner to cheer him on," added Hermione, ruining the effect of Ron's evasiveness.

The banner was a partially ruined bed sheet with a picture of a lion drawn on it and the words "Potter for President," in paint that had been charmed to flash in different colors.

"May I?" I asked, drawing my wand.

Hermione stepped aside. I mumbled something inaudible so the others would think there was an incantation, then I used alchemy through my wand to mend the torn spots in the fabric, manipulate the dyes to offer a better contrast for the words and images, and added a fringe to the banner.

"No one told us Harry was playing," said Sloth.

"It was a secret," said Hermione meaningfully. "The Gryffindor team didn't want the other teams to find out about Harry being on the team before this match."

Looking up at the pillars and their vertical hoops, I asked anyone who was listening, "So, how does this game go again?"

Ron launched into an enthusiastic explanation. Scoring was handled by getting a particular ball, the quaffle, through one of the opposing team's goal hoops. The game ended when a tiny golden ball called a snitch was found and caught by a seeker. That was Harry's position on the team. Meanwhile, heavy iron balls called bludgers attacked the players and beaters used bats to knock bludgers away from their teammates and towards the other team. Ron's older brothers, Fred and George, a pair of identical twins, were the Gryffindor beaters. And of course, the entire game was played while flying on broomsticks.

Surprisingly, the game was a lot easier to follow once it got underway than Ron's explanation had made it seem. If anything was convincing evidence that wizards were more durable than baseline humans, this game was it. You hit a heavy iron ball at a muggle's head and they subsequently fall twenty feet, the result is predictably tragic. In the wizarding world, that level of risk was necessary to have any suspense at all.

As the game went on, Hagrid joined us in the stands. The rest of us bunched together to accommodate the enormous man's presence. Sloth and I leaned into one another. Hagrid was clearly here to cheer Harry on.

In the sky, the snitch was spotted and nearly caught by Harry, but the Slytherin captain crashed into him. The foul provoked calls of outrage from our part of the stands. The student announcing the game also got in on the outrage over the foul.

Hagrid was arguing in favor of a rule change to expel players from the game for fouls like that when Harry's flight pattern went erratic. He was somehow flying worse than I flew, and I wasn't sure real enchanted broomsticks could jerk and buck like that.

It drew Hagrid's attention, who raised his binoculars to get a better look. "Dunno what Harry thinks he's doing. If I didn't know better, I'd say he lost control of his broom. But he can't have."

"Did something happen to it when Flint blocked him?" asked a nearby Gryffindor.

"Can't have," insisted Hagrid. "Can't nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful dark magic. No kid could do that to a Nimbus 2000."

Hermione snatched Sloth's binoculars and started scanning the crowd. Sloth let the strap phase through her neck while she continued to watch Harry with concern. I drew m wand and started working out my best option for cushioning a potential fall. The philosopher's flower lab was right under the quiditich field, so sinking the ground as he impacted would risk exposing the crowd to toxic red water. I could sue a variant of the alchemy I used to mimic the levitation charm and support Harry with a harness of air held still using alchemy.

I was disregarding the idea of using my general countercurse on the grounds that deconstructing and rebuilding Harry's broom would disrupt the enchantments that made it fly as well as the curse that was currently acting on it when Hermione declared, "I knew it! Snape. Look. He's doing something. Jinxing the broom."

I glanced in the direction Hermione indicated and raised my binoculars. Snape was staring at Harry and mouthing the words of some incantation.

"What should we do?" asked Ron.

"Leave it to me," said Hermione.

I did just that as she ran off, returning my attention to Harry. His teammates had flown up to attempt a rescue, but couldn't get close enough. Maybe I should transmute his robes into a parachute. He was getting high enough for that to make a difference.

"Oh my God," gasped Sloth, who'd been monitoring Hermione's progress while I focused on Harry. Whatever Hermione had done worked. Harry was back in control of his broom and was headed down toward solid ground.

Just as he was landing, Harry grabbed his mouth and tumbled off his broom on hands and knees. He then spit the snitch that nearl choked him to death into his hand. The game was over. Gryffindor won. And we rushed Harry off the field away from Snape to the relative safety of Hagrid's hut.

The groundskeeper prepared tea for his guests, especially the boy who'd nearly choked on a golden snitch. Ron, Hermione, Sloth, and I were with them. Loki stood guard outside.

Ron filled Harry in on what had happened. "It was Snape. We saw him. He was cursing your broomstick and muttering. He wouldn't take his eyes off you."

"Rubbish. Why wold Snape do something like that?" demanded Hagrid.

"I found out something about him," said Harry after a long pause. "He tried to get past that three headed dog on Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it's guarding."

"How do you know about Fluffy?" asked Hagrid in shock.

"That's what that limp is from?" I asked at nearly the same time and got a nod from Harry.

"Fluffy?" questioned Ron indignantly.

"Yeah," replied Hagrid. "He's mine. Bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub last year. I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the-" He caught himself.

"Yes?" prompted Harry.

"Now don't ask me anymore. That's top secret, that is," replied Hagrid.

"But Snape's trying to steal it," insisted Harry.

"Rubbish," declared Hagrid. "Snape's a Hogwarts teacher. He'd do nothing of the sort."

Hermione pointed out the obvious flaw in Hagrid's argument. "So why did he just try to kill Harry? I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid. I've read all about them. You've got to keep eye contact and Snape wasn't blinking at all. I saw him."

"I'm telling you you're wrong," replied Hagrid hotly. "I don't know why Harry's broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn't try to kill a student! Now, listen to me, all five of you. It's dangerous. You forget that dog and you forget what it's guarding. That's between Professor Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel-"

"Aha!" crowed Harry. "So, there's someone named Nicholas Flamel involved, is there?"

Hagrid clammed up, looking furious he'd let so much information slip. I decided to wait until we were away from Hagrid to talk to the others about my part in this. Hagrid obviously couldn't keep a secret. 

* * *

"I know what Fluffy's guarding," I told Harry, Ron, and Hermione when we were sure we were out of earshot of the students, teachers, ghosts, and portraits. "Sloth and I are actually helping protect it. It's part of why we're here."

"What's Snape after?" asked Harry.

"The Philosopher's Stone," I said, only to be met with blank looks from Harry and Ron.

"what's that?" asked Ron.

"You've really never heard of it?" I asked baffled.

"I have," announced Hermione. "After you explained who you are, I looked up everything in the library I could find about alchemy. According to what I read, the principle goal of alchemy is the creation of the philosopher's stone. It can turn any metal into pure gold and be used to produce the elixir of life. That's where I remember the name Nicholas Flamel from. He's the only known creator of the Stone, and he's used the Elixir of Life to live over six hundred years along with his wife."

"A stone that makes gold and stops you from ever dying! No wonder Snape's after it! Anyone would want it!" exclaimed Harry.

"Wait, Elixir of Life?" I asked.

"It's a potion you can make if you've got the Philosopher's Stone," said Hermione. "If you drink it, it cures any illness and stops you from ageing for a while. Keep drinking it, and you'll never die."

"Barring accidents or violence," interjected Sloth, working through the implications.

"I thought you two knew everything there was to know about alchemy," noted Ron.

"Apparently not," I admitted. "Did the books say how to brew the Elixir?"

Hermione nodded. "I can lend them to you."

"Thanks," I said.

"It isn't Flame's stone in there, is it?" asked Harry. "It's yours."

"Both stones are there," I clarified.

Ron almost fell over in astonishment. "You have your own Philosopher's Stone?! What I woldn't give to be able to make a fortune of gold."

"The wizarding world knows about potions," I began. "That gives them one trick we never learned. But if they're using the Stone to make gold, that is, an absolute waste of its true powers."

"What are those?" asked Harry.

"The Stone is an amplifier. In the hands of someone with little knowledge of alchemy, it can turn lead into gold and allow the use of alchemy without a transmutation circle. In the hands of a skilled alchemist, there's almost nothing it can't do. It can even bring back the dead."

"That's impossible," said Ron flatly. "You can't bring people back from the dead. When folks try they get zombies and worse. It's the dark arts."

"I've never brought a human to life," I admitted. "But Loki was dead for a while and I used the Stone to bring him back. And I know to brilliant alchemist brothers who managed to bring each other back to life. Edward and Alphonse Elric wouldn't lie about that."

"Either way, we can't let Snape steal it," said Harry.

"Agreed," said Sloth. "Even if he couldn't do much damage with it, Greed and I need it to return to our world."

"What exactly is guarding the Stone, apart from Fluffy?" asked Harry.

Sloth and I looked at each other and I said, "We can't tell you."

"Why not?" demanded Ron. "You don't trust us? Haven't we kept your secret?"

"It's not that," I said quickly, backing up from Ron's indignant anger. "Snape can read minds."

"What?!" all three of them asked in unison.

"Sloth and I know how to make the Philosopher's Stone," I started to explain. "Dumbledore's been teaching us to keep people out of our minds so whoever was after the Stone couldn't use what we know to make their own. Then, just after the troll, Snape tried to read my mind."

"Anything we tell you about how the Stone's guarded," said Sloth, "we might as well be telling Snape." 

* * *

The occlumency training was progressing well. Sloth and I had both mastered the trick of setting up and holding a layer of false thoughts for an extended period of time. There was a turning point in the lessons when Dumbledore once called a stop because he thought he'd penetrated our defenses but he'd really just fallen for the false layer.

While the lessons continued to help us shore up remaining weak points, Sloth and I had mastered the use of the side effect we'd discovered. We could now both project a mental self-image, our alchemically active homunculus bodies would shape shift to conform to it, and thereafter we could hold the new form indefinitely. We could even sleep and maintain a form without reverting back. As such, we both restored our memories of our true default forms and started relying on this new skill to maintain the appearance of Hogwarts first years.

Our studies in the conventional Hogwarts subjects were continuing well. Despite being certain Snape was plotting to steal the Stone, I felt comfortable it was well protected. And if it came down to it, we could just take the Stone back from him. Meanwhile, he was teaching us some very interesting potions. One in particular, I'd been hoping to try out all year.

A major holiday was coming up and nearly everyone was going home to spend it with their families. Not really having anyplace to go, Sloth and I signed up with our respective heads of house to stay at Hogwarts. Meanwhile, I made good use of the owl post to order things. It was a gift giving holiday, and I got into the spirit. I made a set of wand holsters for Harry, Ron, and Hermione so they wouldn't need to keep trying to stuff their wands into pockets.

The Weasley siblings and Harry were staying over the holidays with us. Malfoy tried to muster some lame insults about how none of us were wanted. It amused me how it fell almost as flat as his bizarre attempts to insult Harry for having won the Quidditch game. The good news was that we wouldn't have to put up with him over the holidays.

I'd made some expansions to the hidden lab Sloth and I maintained under the Quidditch field. A set of potions work spaces were added where I could try out potions that took longer than a class period to seep, stew, or otherwise brew. I added planters and actually started doing what I'd told Professor Sprout I was going to do, and started growing some useful plant based potion ingredients. I used up the last of the wizard money Dumbledore had given us for school supplies, but since it looked like transmuting gold wasn't against the law in this world, we shouldn't have trouble making more.

On a stand, on top of a worktable laid out with library books and alchemy notes, was a project I'd started working on a couple months into the term. It was a broomstick. Alchemic diagrams covered the entire shaft of wood. First year students weren't allowed their own brooms (unless they were on the quiditich team, apparently) so I hadn't been able to take it out for a test flight. I was pretty sure I'd managed to duplicate all the standard broomstick enchantments and I'd even added a few features even the modern racing brooms didn't have. Meanwhile, Sloth and I had both gotten more dexterous riding the useless school brooms and using red stones to handle the needed alchemy.

Hermione left me a long reading list before she headed home to spend the holidays with her family. I think she included every book on this world's understanding of alchemy that was in the library. It turned out there wasn't much on the subject Amestris didn't already know. There were a few potions with alchemic properties, but without the transmutation circle, this world's alchemy had fallen way behind. The Elixir of Life was the sole exception. It turned out brewing the Elixir was a relatively simple process. Unfortunately, experiments with my red stones indicated it had to be the real Stone. I was tempted to ask Dumbledore for my Stone back to experiment with, but it was hardly urgent and I was quickly distracted by other matters. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
It took a while, but Sloth and Greed have finally befriended the Trio. Meanwhile, Snape is being as suspicious as ever. Our interdimensional travelers will be learning almost as much about their own powers here as they will about the magic of this world, and this is where it all starts.


	5. Chapter 8: Christmas at Hogwarts

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 8) Christmas at Hogwarts  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The feast in the Great Hall for Christmas eve saw only Harry, Ron, the twins, Ron's older brother Percy, the Gryffindor prefect, a handful of other students, and the faculty. It didn't make much sense to divide out by House tables.

Harry and Ron were engaged in a chess match as they ate. When Harry's pieces started protesting his chosen moves, I started to think the wizarding world was more than a little too casual about making thing sentient. Doubly so when Ron took one of Harry's pieces and Ron's piece walked over to Harry's and beat it unconscious before tossing it to the side of the board.

"Please tell me this is like the photographs and those chess pieces just look intelligent," I begged Ron as I sat down. "I'm not going to be able to eat if you're doing some twisted blood sport, pitting slave armies against each other at the table."

Ron looked up at me quizzically and said, "They're chess men."

"Do you mind?" I asked, picking up one of Harry's pieces that had regained consciousness and was moping at the side of the board.

"Hello," Sloth greeted the chess piece. "I'm Sloth. What's your name?"

"I'm Queen's Pawn, White," Identified the enchanted figure.

"Can you tell me about yourself?" I asked.

"I can tell you this dunderhead lost me to a knight in a rookie mistake," it fumed.

"I am a rookie," declared Harry. "Everyone has to start learning the game sometime."

"That's why you should listen to our advice," affirmed the pawn. "We've seen more games than you, and I warned you about that knight."

"What do you do between games?" I asked the pawn, trying to get the conversation back on track.

"What do you mean?" asked the pawn. "We don't do anything between games. We're chessmen."

"I told you," said Ron.

"Do you have any hopes or fears?" asked Sloth.

"I hope we can win the next game, but I'm afraid he'll still be calling the shots."

"Anything besides chess?" I asked, flustered.

"I don't understand," said the piece.

"Like you said," prompted Sloth, "you've been around a while. You've seen things that happen off the board. Do you ever think about them at all?"

"No," said the chessman.

"You don't go to chessmen for conversation," said Ron. "They can get better at the game and learn new strategies, but try to talk to them about anything but chess and they'll just stare at you."

"A purpose built mind," I mused. "Invested with language skills and the ability to learn, but unable to even think outside the rules of the game."

"So, they're not on par with the portraits," said Sloth. "They sort of think, but not quite like a person."

"I think we're good, then," I said slowly and got some food.

While Harry and Ron's one sided chess game continued, Fred and George, the Weasley twins, boasted about bewitching some snowballs earlier in the day to launch themselves at the turban Professor Quirrell wears. They'd apparently hit a few times before Filch caught them.

As I listened, my eyes kept being drawn back to the chessmen. Percy must've noticed, as he came over and sat down next to Sloth and I.

"Lots of muggleborns have those sorts of questions," explained Percy. "The ministry has classifications for nonhumans that make sure we give rights and protections to those who need it. Enchanted chessmen can't ever be anything more than chessmen. They can learn to be good at chess, but they can't learn things that have nothing to do with chess."

Percy's explanation was comforting. At least it meant people here weren't ignoring the possibility. After we ate, I pulled Sloth aside to talk privately before we retired to our respective empty dorms.

"What do you think about the chessmen?" I asked her.

"My father wanted to make a doll and a weapon when he was making me," Sloth said thoughtfully. "But both of his creations couldn't help but grow beyond what he wanted them to be. He kept Nina in line with memory wipes and Sloth with threats. If the chessmen really don't need that kind of control to keep them from growing beyond chess, I think they must not really be people. They just do a good impression."

"That makes sense," I acknowledged. Then, "Whatever magic was used to make them is going to be crazy to duplicate with alchemy."

"You'll figure it out," said Sloth with supreme confidence. 

* * *

When I awoke the next morning in the empty Ravenclaw dorm, I found the wand holsters I'd wrapped and labeled for Harry and Ron were gone. (Hermione's had been sent home with her.) In their place were some packages with my name on them that hadn't been there the previous night. Hogwarts apparently had a delivery service of some sort. Probably the same one that delivered our trunks to our dorms. Putting that mystery aside, I opened my gifts.

Hermione had sent me a box of cauldron cakes, my favorite of the wizard sweets I'd sampled thus far. Hagrid had sent a package addressed to Loki. With the dog offering no objections, I opened it for him, revealing a half a pound of cooked bacon. Deciding it was best to ration that out through the day, I gave the excited dog the first piece right away.

"We'll have to say thank you to Hagrid,, won't we, boy?" I said as he gobbled up the treat. "I got you something too."

Loki didn't know it was a holiday, nor did he really care that I'd wrapped his gift, but I'd gotten into the holiday. The package contained a collar, decorated with an alchemic array and had a red stone attached to the front. It would interface with the array tattooed under his fur and allow him to change forms without damaging the surrounding environment or dumping organic waste. A single stone should give him two or three changes before needing to be replaced.

The last package was from Sloth. Inside was a gold pedant on a chain. A transmutation circle was engraved on the front. Pressing my thumb to it, the array activated, creating a seam and hinge in the solid metal, revealing it to be a locket. Inside was a small wizard photo of Sloth smiling warmly and waving. I closed the locket, used the array to reseal it, and put it on.

Loki and I wore our new necklaces proudly as we went down to the Great Hall. Sloth arrived just after we did. Noticing I was wearing her locket, Sloth asked, "Do you like it?"

"I love it," I said. "You must've put a lot of effort into it, between the picture and the array."

"I wanted to get you something you couldn't just clap your hands and make," she said proudly. "It isn't easy shopping for a master alchemist," she teased.

"I got something for you too," I said, "but Filch'd take it away if he saw, so it's downstairs."

"And to think," Sloth mused with an affectionate smile, "my job used to be to corrupt you."

I gave her a kiss, then grabbed some sweet rolls and ran outside. The arrays on my boots let me run across the top of the snow without sinking in or leaving tracks. Sloth used her powers to pass through the snow, running along the frozen ground beneath. If we were lucky, no one would miss us.

When we reached the Quidditch field, Sloth pulled us below ground, and into our private lab. I approached a blank wall near one of the workstations, clapped my hands, and transmuted a large drawer, which I then opened. Inside was a long, wrapped package. Sloth tore it open, revealing a broomstick similar to the one I'd been designing for my own use. The array was different, designed to run off a red tone that was embedded in the shaft. A number of broken lines in the array prevented it from activating.

"I hope you like it," I began. "I know remaking the array every time you want to turn or stop in mid-flight is making flying harder for you. Each sub array can be activated by adding one line, and all the features for staying on and cushioning potential crashes are in each sub array."

"How long have you been working on this?" asked Sloth.

"Since I finished mine," I replied. "I wanted to give you something practical."

"I love it," she declared, hugging me.

"Let's get back topside before we're missed," I suggested, transmuting her a stand for her broomstick before we left.

* * *

A feast had been prepared in the Great Hall. Along the tables, wizard party favors called crackers had been laid out. Watching the Gryffindors to see how to use them, Sloth and I each grabbed on and pulled one apart. An explosion like an artillery shell but with no physical damage accompanied the appearance of a large, fur hat, some mice, and a slip of paper with a joke written on it.

We pulled a few more crackers, accumulating some magical merchandise considered minor enough to count as party favors, including wizard chess sets. We also had more hats of various descriptions than we knew what to do with by the time we actually started eating.

After everyone was full, it was mutually agreed we would drop off our prizes in our trunks and meet up outside for a snowball fight. I arrived on the battlefield a bit late, since the riddle for today was tricky and I was anxious to get outside. I eventually figured it out, but that meant I arrived outside to a vigorous snow war already in progress.

The game was a free for all, with no particular rules or sides. Harry turned out to be better at dodging thrown projectiles than even Sloth and I, who'd seen actual combat. I hit the ground running, having learned from hard experience just how much harder it was to hit a moving target than a stationary one.

As I ran, I scooped up some snow to make my projectile. I launched it at Ron, who didn't quite duck in time, his maroon sweater gaining a frosting of snowflakes from the hit. Meanwhile, I took a hit from behind. Sloth had beaned me i the shoulder. I dropped to the ground and rolled behind a drift for cover.

A pair of snowballs flew over my head while I was behind cover, and then curved back around to hit me in the back of the head. Fred and George had used the same trick on Quirrell. Probably a variant of the spell they put on bludgers in Quidditch.

"So, we're using our powers now?" I called over the drift as I balled up some snow. "Okay, let's play." I carved a transmutation circle into the snowball and lobbed it over the barrier. Like with the bullets of the Gunslinger Alchemist, the array activated on impact, transmuting a hundred snowballs and sending them flying in every direction. Sloth and Harry made it to cover. The Weasleys didn't.

With that, a common rule of no magic was quickly agreed to, and I was subsequently on the receiving end of some retribution peltings from the Weasleys, with Ron having directed the others to flank me and neutralize my cover.

Once they had their revenge for my snowball grenade, the fight went back to a free for all. It lasted hours, Sloth and I needing to fake fatigue after a certain point to avoid revealing we weren't human. Everyone was soaked to the bone by the time we went back inside around sunset.

It had been fun, but I was glad to get back to the privacy of the Ravenclaw common room, clap my hands, and press my palms against my robes. A burst of blue light dried me instantly and I sat down next to one of the fireplaces. Giving Loki the last of his treats from Hagrid, I set up my wizard chess set, grabbed one of the cauldron cakes from Hermione, and played against the chessmen for a few hours.

Extended interaction with the chessmen confirmed Percy's assessment. While playing chess, they could do a good impression of being alive, outside that context they understood nothing and couldn't learn. Loki was at least capable of learning and adapting to new situations, but if it wasn't a chess strategy, they couldn't.

Thinking about it, imbuing this sort of limited intelligence had to be at the root of a lot of what wizards do. The homing snowballs were made smart enough to identify and track a target. The golden snitch was invested with the flight characteristics of a bird. The only reason the chessmen stood out is that they had a memory and the ability to talk. 

* * *

The next day, I was sketching transmutation circles in a notebook over breakfast. There had been a time when Alphonse Elric had seriously considered whether he was a real person who's soul had been attached to a suit of armor, or if Edward had created his consciousness from whole cloth. That wasn't the case for Al, but since homunculi like Sloth exist with a body and mind but no soul, it might actually be possible ot create the kind of consciousness Al thought himself to be. I'd never tried because of ethical concerns, but making a more limited mind like the chess men would avoid the ethical problem, but only if I got the design of the mind just right.

I was interrupted by Harry, who had Ron in tow. He grabbed me and Sloth and spoke excitedly as we sat down together. "I saw my parents last night!"

"Where?" asked Sloth.

"How?" asked Ron.

"I snuck out of bed last night and found a magic mirror. It showed me my mom and dad."

"You used the cloak?" asked Ron. "You could have woken me up."

"You can come tonight. I'm going back. I want to show you the mirror."

"I'd like to see your mom and dad," said Ron, forgetting his irritation at having been left out last night.

"And I want to see your family, all the Weasleys. You'll be able to show me your other brothers and everyone," declared Harry.

"You can see them any old time. Just come round my house this summer. Anyway, maybe it only shows dead people," replied Ron.

"I wonder what it'll show me," mused Sloth. "My family situation is complicated."

"Only one way to find out," I said, putting my arm around her shoulder.

"Harry," said Ron. "Have some bacon or something. Why aren't you eating anything? Are you all right? You look odd." 

* * *

Sloth and I waited outside the hall leading to the Gryffindor tower. Eventually, we heard a "pst," whisper and an unseen hood was drawn back, revealing Harry and Ron's heads floating in midar.

"It's an invisibility cloak," explained Ron quietly.

"I got it for Christmas," added Harry. "The note said it used to be my father's."

"It'll be a tight fit, but I think we can all get under it," said Ron. "That way Filch won't catch us out of our dorms."

Sloth and I squeezed under the silvery cloak and found we could no longer see our own bodies.

"Don't worry about bumping in to anyone," said Sloth.

"Right," said Harry, remembering Sloth's phasing the two of them through the troll's club.

Harry couldn't quite recall where he'd found the mirror, and after an hour, Ron complained, "I'm freezing. Let's forget it and go back."

"No!" hissed Harry emphatically. "I know it's here somewhere."

We all fell silent as a ghost passed us by. When it was gone, Harry recognized the door nearby and led us inside. He ducked out from under the crowded invisibility cloak and ran to face the mirror. "See?"

"I can't see anything," said Ron, and neither could I. Harry was reflected and no one was standing around his reflection.

"Look! Look at them all! There are loads of them," declared Harry looking at the area surrounding his reflection.

"I can only see you," said Ron.

"Look in it properly," said Harry. "Stand where I am."

Ron stared at his reflection with wonder. "Look at me!"

"Can you see all your family standing around you?" asked Harry.

"No. I'm alone, but I'm different. I look older, and I'm Head Boy!"

"What?" asked Harry.

"The vision must be unique to each person," I mused. "And private. None of us can see your vision while you're using the mirror."

Sloth gave a sigh of relief at that. I didn't blame her.

Ron continued describing what he saw. "I am- I'm wearing the badge like Bill used to, and I'm holding the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup. I'm Quidditch Captain too!" Ron turned around and asked, "Do you think this mirror shows the future?"

"How can it?" asked Harry. "All my family are dead."

"Let me try," asked Sloth, nimbly stepping into position while Ron was distracted. She gasped. All three of us fell silent and looked at her.

"What do you see?" asked Harry.

"I... I'm doing alchemy."

"That's all?" asked Ron. "Why did you gasp?"

"You don't understand," said Sloth. "When I do alchemy, I'm really just making a circle and letting a red stone power it. A real alchemist circulates energy between the circle and their soul. Greed, I have a soul!"

"What is this mirror?" I asked, suspiciously. I looked over the gold frame and saw an unhelpful inscription on the top.

"Why don't you try it," suggested Harry. Sloth pulled her gaze from the reflection and stepped aside.

When I was centered around the mirror, the reflection changed. I was reflected at my true adult height, in my pale skinned, black haired homunculus form with violet, slitted eyes. Sloth was at my side, also in her true homunculus form. She was dressed in a white gown.

The room behind us was no longer the unused Hogwarts classroom. It looked like the temple of Leto. Arranged in the pews, I could make out all the people I'd come to know and care about back in our world. I could see Edward and Alphonse in the front row. Melvin, Ken, and even Frank were off on one side. Wrath and Izumi were sitting together with Sig.

I don't know how long I spent examining the sight before Ron asked, "What's it showing?"

"It's our wedding," I said, holding a hand out to Sloth without taking my eyes off the image. "Everyone's there. Leo, Rick, Mustang and his people. Ed, Al, Winry and Pinako. Folks like Psiren and Paninya are there too, even after what happened last time we met. And there are even dead people like Izumi and Wrath."

"Is my father there?" asked Sloth.

I scanned the image and shook my head. "Al's there, but no Shao. What do you think it means?"

"Let me have another look," asked Harry.

"You had it all to yourself last night," argued Ron. "Give me another turn."

"You're only holding the Quidditch Cup," declared Harry. "What's interesting about that? I want to see my parents!"

They both started shoving me out of the way when a noise from the corridor caused us all to frieze. Sloth thought fast, grabbed up the invisibility cloak, and tossed it over the three of us already crowded together, then slipped under herself.

Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris, poked her head inside. It was common knowledge Mrs. Norris was able to report back to Filch and bring him to the scene of rule breaking. I'd never had cause to put those rumors to the test before now.

When she'd gone for Filch, Ron said, "This isn't safe. She might have gone for Filch. I bet she heard us. Come on." He pulled us out of the room and got Sloth and I back to our dorms. 

* * *

The Gate opened on many other worlds. Maybe an infinite number of them. Did the mirror let us see our doubles on one or more of those worlds? It wasn't much use speculating. There just wasn't enough information to narrow down the possibilities.

I had a hard time concentrating on the chess men project I'd taken on. The image I'd seen in the mirror kept returning to my thoughts. Rather than do shoddy work on something so important, I went to see what Sloth was doing.

I found her poking at a conventional transmutation circle while she sat by a window overlooking the grounds.

"Can't get the mirror out of your head either?" I said as I sat down with her.

"I wondered if maybe it was showing me I had the potential in me all along," she said. "I guess not. What've you been up to?"

"I was working on the chessmen," I replied, "but I can't stop thinking about what I saw in the mirror."

"Do you think Ron was right and it is the future?" asked Sloth.

"We know raising the dead is possible," I conceded, "but something about that explanation doesn't sit right."

"There's a lot we don't know about this world's magic," said Sloth.

"That's why we're taking the classes," I said. 

* * *

Ron didn't join us when Harry came under the invisibility cloak to get us that night. We arrived without incident and without getting lost this time, and Harry immediately sat down in front of the mirror.

"So, back again, Harry?" asked Dumbledore. He'd been seated on a desk when we'd come in and nobody noticed.

"I- I didn't see you, sir," said Harry, looking pale and guilty.

"Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you," mused Dumbledore, smiling benignly.

"Hello," I said lamely, and Sloth just silently waved. He didn't look upset, but the sudden worry of being expelled rose to the surface of my mind once again. I'd barely scratched the surface of the secrets this school could teach.

Dumbledore went to sit down with Harry. Sloth and I followed suit. "So, you like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised."

"The name's on the inscription," I said, recognizing the first word from my inspection last night.

"I expect you've realized by now what it does?" asked Dumbledore.

"It... Well, it shows me my family," replied Harry.

"I saw my wedding," I added.

"It showed me doing alchemy," said Sloth.

"And it showed your friend Ron himself as Head Boy," finished Dumbledore.

"How do you know-?" began Harry.

"I don't need a cloak to become invisible," noted Dumbledore. "Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?"

Sloth and I stared. Harry shook his head.

"Let me explain," offered Dumbledore. "The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror. That is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?"

Comprehension dawning, I said, "Erised. Desire. The inscription's written backwards."

"It shows us what we want," said Harry, "whatever we want."

"Yes and no," said Dumbledore. "It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However," said Dumbledore, looking each of us in the eye, "this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.

"The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, and I ask all of you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. Remember that. Now, why don't you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?"

"It does tell us one thing," I said, getting up. "It tells us what we want deep down, even if we aren't sure ourselves."

"Sir? Professor Dumbledore?" asked Harry. "Can I ask you something?"

"Obviously, you've just done so. You may ask me one more thing, however," he replied, amused.

"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

"I? I see myself holding a pair of thick woolen socks," said Dumbledore. As I stared skeptically, he continued, "One can never have enough socks. Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn't get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books."

True or not, I mused on the way back to my dorm, that did make shopping for next year's Christmas presents for Dumbledore easy. 

* * *

Sloth and I met up early the next day. The mirror had clarified something important for us, and now knowing the contexts of our visions, we needed to talk.

"I'll do everything in my power to make what you saw a reality," I told Sloth. "An enchanted castle full of ghosts and a library of forbidden lore is the perfect place to do research on the nature of the soul."

"Just be careful," requested Sloth. "Take it slow and don't move forward until you're sure you know what you're doing. I don't want anything to happen to you. Or me for that matter."

"I promise," I told her. "We have plenty of time after all. And I don't think I could live with myself if I screwed it up and lost you."

"So," asked Sloth with a smirk as she changed the subject, "I'd ask if you wanted to talk about wedding plans, but it sounds like a big guest list is important."

"I think it was about more than that," I said. "Everyone there was happy for us. They accepted us, even after knowing about our nature and the broken taboos."

"I can't make everyone accept us," said Sloth, leaning her forehead against mine, "but at least we know the people who do are our real friends."

Near tears, I choked out, "I love you."

"Do you have to do that in the halls?" asked an annoyed voice.

"Ron," I replied, separating from Sloth and wiping my face. "Just the person we wanted to see."

"What did you want with me?" he asked, taken aback.

"We were talking about the mirror," said Sloth. "Did Harry tell you what Dumbledore said about it?"

"Yeah," said Ron. "He said it could drive you mad."

"Even so," I said, "thanks to the mirror, we all know something pretty intimate about each other. Dumbledore wants socks and socks he shall get. Sloth and I've been talking about our visions. I don't think there's anything we can do to make Harry's desire come true. Even with the Philosopher's Stone, I think I'd need to know the person I'm trying to bring back to life. But I think there's something we can do for you."

"You know a way to make me Head Boy?" asked Ron, confused.

"We can help you stand apart from your siblings," I said. "Give you an accomplishment that none of them beat you to, and will be more important than any of them."

Ron was intrigued and asked, "What is it?"

"Remember how we said alchemy in this world is way behind our world?" I asked. "How would you like to be the first wizard ever to learn modern alchemy?"

"I could make my own Philosopher's Stone," mused Ron.

"No!" I snapped. "There are secrets about the Stone, prices you don't understand. The Stone's lore is dangerous. Most alchemist who learned how to make it abandoned their research or went insane. Besides, if I tell you how to make the Stone and Snape reads your mind..."

"What if I learned to keep him out like you?" asked Ron.

"Then I'll tell you everything," I agreed. "But for now, put the Philosopher's Stone out of your mind. Like I said, the alchemy I'm offering to teach is much more advanced than this world knows. I don't need the Philosopher's Stone to turn lead into gold, and if you study, neither will you."

"You can do that?" asked Ron.

I took a silver coin I'd found in the Christmas pudding out of my pocket, and flipped it in the air. As it flipped, I clapped my hands and caught the coin. Blue sparks flew off my closed fist. Then I opened it to reveal the gold coin.

"What do you say, Ron?" I asked. "It'll mean a lot of studying. Math, chemistry, geology, and more. Do you think you're up for it?"

Staring hungrily at the coin, and the power it represented, Ron asked, "How do we get started?"

"I'll cover the early lessons," said Sloth. "Teaching this stuff used to sort of be my job."

"No red stones," I stipulated. "We won't do him any good giving him shortcuts. When he's got a handle on conventional alchemy, we'll move on to amplifiers."

"Of course," agreed Sloth cheerfully. "We wouldn't want him triggering a rebound and tearing his own arm off or worse." 

* * *

Properly motivated, Ron proved an apt and dedicated student. He'd prepared and used his first transmutation circle before the end of the day. While the results of that first transmutation lacked the magic that had been there for my first transmutation, it still encouraged Ron that he could do this.

I sat in on the first few lessons, but Sloth clearly didn't need my help. She couldn't do this kind of alchemy herself, but teaching it to Karin, Leo, that had been most of what Shao made her do in pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone. And as I understood it, it was a big part of what Dante had made her homunculi do before that. It was nice seeing those teaching abilities being used for good.

Once it became clear I wasn't needed, I spent my time in the library, looking for information on the nature of the soul. Like in our world, the concept was muddied by a lot of religious assertions and poetry. I hadn't made much progress by the end of the break.

Ron, Sloth, Harry, and I greeted Hermione when she got back and told her what had happened while she was gone. She fussed at the idea of us sneaking out at night. When Ron mentioned we'd started teaching him alchemy, she immediately asked, "Is it too late for me to start those lessons?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but Harry spoke up first. "Hermione, the point was to give Ron something all his own. If you're learning it too, it defeats the purpose."

"Besides," I added before either she or Ron could speak, "while Sloth teaches him basic alchemy, I need your help on a more advanced project."

I felt bad about using her curiosity against her like that, but Harry was right. The point was to give Ron something of his own. Once he mastered the skill, she could learn it from him.

"What are you working on?" she asked.

"Remember how we explained about being homunculi?" I asked. "I was originally human, and attached my soul to this body. Sloth's fully artificial. I need your help learning everything there is to know about the soul so I can try and make one for Sloth."

"You can't make souls," said Ron.

"You can't make gold either," I retorted. "I figure if I can learn what a soul is made of, how it's put together, I might be able to do something with alchemy." 

* * *

Author's comments:  
While the specific visions didn't really amount to much in the original books, keep an eye out for them to come back again later in this story. Dumbledore isn't the only one Greed will be Christmas shopping for.


	6. Chapter 9: Hagrid's Dragon

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 9) Hagrid's Dragon  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

Regular classes resumed the next day. Harry's free time was being taken up by Quiditich practice. Whenever he was at practice, the rest of us were at the library. Sloth was making Ron study chemistry using the library's resources and her own additions. It was important background knowledge if you're going to do anything with alchemy. Hermione and I, meanwhile, sat opposite one another quietly reading to see if anything useful was in the books, outside the ever tempting restricted section.

A few weeks into this routine, and Harry came to see us after practice, looking worried. We quickly filed out of the library and into an empty classroom where Harry explained that Snape had volunteered to referee the next Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.

"Don't play," said Hermione immediately.

"Say you're ill," suggested Ron almost as quickly.

"Pretend to break your leg," offered Hermione.

"Really break your leg," came Ron's addition. He was clearly worried after Harry'd nearly been killed last time.

"I can't. There isn't a reserve Seeker. If I back out, Gryffindor can't play at all," said Harry.

"If we had more proof he tried to jinx you last game, we could get him arrested," I said, frustrated.

"We could break Snape's leg," suggested Sloth. When we all stared at her, she pointed to Hermione and said, "Don't look at me like that. You set him on fire."

So, that had been how she'd interrupted the jinx last game. It was a shame my focus had been elsewhere. Our conversation was interrupted by a loud thud from the hall. Looking out, we saw Neville on the floor, trying to get upright despite his legs being stuck together with a leg locker curse.

Hermione quickly performed the countercurse and asked, "What happened?"

Neville got to his feet and said, "Malfoy. I met him outside the library. He said he'd been looking for someone to practice that on."

"Is he still there?" I asked, drawing my wand and of a mind to give him a taste of his own medicine, but Neville shook his head.

"Go to Professor McGonagall! Report him!" urged Hermione.

"I don't want more trouble," he said with his eyes on the floor.

Ron declared, "You've got to stand up to him, Neville. He's used to walking all over people, but that's no reason to lie down in front of him and make it easier."

"There's no need to tell me I'm not brave enough to be in Gryffindor," said Neville almost sobbing. "Malfoy's already done that."

"You're worth twelve of Malfoy," declared Harry, giving Neville a chocolate frog he had in his robe pocket. "The Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn't it? And where's Malfoy? In stinking Slyterin."

"If he's been using Hufflepuff like it's an insult again, I'll make him eat his pointed hat," declared Sloth.

"Thanks Harry," said Neville, unwrapping the chocolate frog. "I think I'll go to bed now. Do you want the card? You collect them, don't you?"

Neville walked off and Harry looked at the card, declaring, "Dumbledore again. He was the first one I ever got."

"I still need him," I mentioned. "I've got some I can trade." I pulled out a stack of cards I kept on me for trades and let Harry find one he was missing.

* * *

In preparation for the Quiditich game, Ron and Hermione practiced the leg locker curse to use on Snape if he tried anything. I brought my camera to capture evidence of him in the act this time, so if he tried to hurt Harry again, it would be the last time. Sloth was in charge of conducting any actual rescue needed.

Ron and Hermione tried to talk Harry out of playing right up until he disappeared into the locker room. When we made our way up to the stands, we saw Dumbledore was in attendance. It seemed he'd taken Harry's earlier fall seriously, which was a relief after Hagrid had brushed it off.

Sloth was off with her housemates, since despite not wanting Harry dead, she was still cheering for her house team. I was confident that she'd handle anything that happened to Harry. I was with Ron and Hermione in a spot with good sight lines on where Snape was refereeing from his broomstick. My camera was in hand and half-raised, while Ron and Hermione kept their wands accessible. As usual, Loki was with me.

"I've never seen Snape look so mean," said Ron, noting the dark look on the potions master's face, prompting me to take a picture for context. "Look, they're off. Ouch!"

"Oh, sorry, Weasley, didn't see you there," came the voice of Draco Malfoy in a tone that made it clear whatever he'd done was deliberate. "Wonder how long Potter's going to stay on his broom this time. Anyone want a bet? What about you, Weasley?"

None of us had anything to say to Draco, keeping our attention firmly focused on the field. Snape was proving to be an incredibly biased referee, awarding the Hufflepuff team penalties for things I was pretty sure were normal parts of the game.

Like a buzzing insect, Draco continued to try to get a rise. "You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team? It's people they feel sorry for. See, there's Potter, who's got no parents, then there's the Weasleys, who've got no money. You should be on the team, Longbottom. You've got no brains."

"I'm worth twelve of you, Malfoy," retorted Neville in a nervous, halting tone that drew derisive laughs from Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle.

Ron didn't look away from the match, but firmly and earnestly said, "You tell him, Neville."

Draco caught his breath and sneered, "Longbottom, if brains were gold, you'd be poorer than Weasley, and that's saying something.

That hit a nerve, and Ron snapped, "I'm warning you, Malfoy. One more word..."

At that point, Harry dove toward the ground. It didn't look uncontrolled, but it drew expressions of concern from my companions.

"Let Sloth keep an eye on Harry," I advised them, trying to stick to the plan and keep photographing Snape.

"You're in luck, Weasley," said Draco now that he'd found an insecurity to poke at. "Potter's obviously spotted some money on the ground."

Ron had controlled his temper pretty well until that point, but Draco's cracks about his family combined with his already frayed nerves worrying about Harry were more than he could take, and he threw himself at Malfoy. Neville paused, unsure of what to do, but when Crabbe and Goyle went to back Malfoy up, Neville scrambled to interpose himself.

I couldn't risk backing them up and missing evidence of Snape's attempted murder of Harry, and Hermione was now the only one with a wand on Snape. Unable to intervene directly, I gave Loki a signal.

My dog turned toward the fighters and growled. Blue light poured from beneath his fur, mixing with red light from the transmutation circle on his collar. With the red stone in his collar, the benches didn't break down to fuel the drastic increase in Loki's mass. In a flash, the three hundred pound chimera shoulder-checked Crabbe and Goyle off Neville protectively. The green scaled, gold maned chimera parted his lips to grown at Malfoy, bearing a massive jaw full of teeth. At the sight, Ron and Draco stopped fighting and Draco scrambled away as fast as he could, followed by Crabbe and Goyle once they regained their feet.

While all this was going on, Harry had caught the golden snitch and won the game for Gryffindor. Hermione hugged me, so excited that her house was in the lead. With Draco and his gang gone, Loki relaxed and reverted to his plain, brown dog form. Again the collar glowed red and the stone allowed him to violate equivalent exchange, this time by not shedding his lost mass as an organic slurry at his feet. Ron hesitantly petted the dog as he got to his feet. Then, noticing what had happened on the Quidditch field, he waved to Harry and cheered.

Once Harry was safely on the ground, being congratulated by Dumbledore, I took one last picture of Snape's disgruntled expression, then turned to Ron. "Give me a hand getting Neville to the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey can take a look at that bloody nose while you're there."

* * *

An hour or so after the game, I was pretty sure our efforts had been for nothing, since Snape hadn't dared make a move with Dumbledore watching. Sloth was mildly annoyed that Hufflepuff had lost in record time, but we were both agreed the short match had left Snape fewer opportunities to attack Harry.

As we were talking, Harry, Ron, and Hermione found us and pulled us into an empty classroom. Harry'd heard Snape and Quirrell talking about the Stone.

"So, we were right," said Harry. "Snape's trying to force Quirrell to help him get the Philosopher's Stone. He asked if he knew how to get past Fluffy, and he said something about Quirrell's 'hocus pocus'. I reckon there are other things guarding the Stones apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-dark arts spell that Snape needs to break through."

"So you mean the Stones are only safe as long as Quirrell stands up to Snape," said Hermione.

"They'll be gone by next Tuesday," snarked Ron.

"Our occlumency lessons ended a couple weeks ago," I said. "I almost never see Dumbledore someplace we could tell him about this without Snape overhearing."

"And if he's been intimidating the other teachers into helping him," added Sloth, "we can't just go to one of them."

"Hagrid's safe," said Harry. "Snape still doesn't know how to get past Fluffy."

"He didn't believe Snape tried to kill you, Harry," said Hermione.

"He probably wouldn't pass along an accusation about Snape," agreed Harry, "but he's loyal to Dumbledore."

"Between Quirrell's spell and Fluffy, the Stones are safe for the moment," said Sloth. "I say we go back to what we were doing before and keep an eye out for evidence we can use to prove what Snape's up to." 

* * *

Except for occasionally checking on the third floor corridor to make sure Fluffy was still alright, things went back to normal for a while. We were transfiguring larger objects, and burning through red stones a bit faster, but nowhere near as fast as we were producing them. It was getting harder to keep up with the written homework, my research into the nature of the soul, and my resumed attempt to understand and duplicate the chessmen. To resolve the conflict, I just stopped sleeping.

Near midnight, I was in the Ravenclaw common room. Loki was asleep in my bed. I'd sorted through both the assigned homework and the study guide Hermione had prepared. For the last three hours, I'd been going over my notes on soul attachment, memory modification, and cognitive function. Progress had been coming rapidly when I remembered Cornello had animated the Leto statues back in Liore to hunt down and subdue the Elric brothers independently.

I was certain it was an equivalency problem, requiring red stone energy to produce the rudimentary consciousness that could then be manipulated by unboosted alchemy. Homunculi proved the mind and soul were separate things, and I was increasingly confident a mind with no soul could animate a non organic body. The moment was here. I'd double and triple checked my arrays.

On the table, a lump of rock sat in the middle of a detailed transmutation circle drawn on a large sheet of parchment. I looked over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching, then took a red stone from my pocket and held it above the array. Both the array and the stone glowed blue as the lump of rock took the form of a miniature human being dressed in a carved facimile of an Amestris military uniform, holding a stone rifle with affixed bayonet. A transmutation circle was engraved on its back to serve as the anchoring point for the artificial mind.

When the light of the transmutation faded, the stone soldier turned and looked at me, red pinpoints of light shining in its eye sockets. Demonstrating the articulation of its joints, the figure slung its rifle and snapped into a military salute.

"King's pawn, reporting for duty, sir," it declared.

I addressed the chessman and put it through a series of mental tests I'd used on the wizard made versions. I was able to verify that it knew everything it needed to know about chess, that it was able to retain chess related knowledge, and it didn't learn or grow in any other area. I'd succeeded.

Now secure that I'd gotten it right, I updated the arrays on my wand and shoes, then used the wand to produce a full set of alchemy powered chessmen. Tanks served in the capacity of rooks. The bishops wore the dress uniforms and were armed with pocket watches bearing the Amestris crest on carefully carved chains. Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye were recognizable as the king and queen. The knights were a pair of military chimeras.

With a full set of chessmen, I set up a game between my new set and the wizard set I'd gotten at Christmas. The alchemic reinforcement and purification of the base materials I'd done meant my chessmen stood up well to the violent nature of the game, not suffering meaningful damage when defeated. Meanwhile, their attacks were more than enough to take opposing pieces. While the guns were nonfunctional, the pieces bludgeoned their opposition with them all the same. 

* * *

The Easter holidays were a chance to step up Ron's alchemy training. Sloth had gotten him through the basics, and I'd taken over the lessons. He was doing well on reconfiguring matter, but was getting anxious to try elemental transmutation. I had to persuade him to hold off on that until he'd at least gotten a handle on working iwth the chemical bonds in his base material. I saw a lot of my own eagerness in his push to master the skill, but it had to be tempered by the fact that he had other classes.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sloth, and I were studying in the library after the holiday. Sloth and I were comparing methods for duplicating charms when Ron greeted Hagrid.

"Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?" asked Ron.

I looked up and saw the enormous groundskeeper. "That was rude," I noted. "Why wouldn't he want to come by the library?"

"Just looking," said Hagrid with a guilty look on his face as though Ron actually had caught him doing something wrong. As if to throw us off guard and reverse the situation, he asked, "And what're you lot up to? You're not still looking for Nicholas Flamel, are you?"

"Oh, we found out who he is ages ago," said Ron proudly. "And we know what that dog's guarding. It's the Philosopher's-ouch!"

Sloth had jammed her wand hard into his side as Hagid said, "Shh! Don't go shouting about it. What's the matter with you?"

"There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter of fact, about what's guarding the Stones apart from Fluffy," said Harry.

"Shh!" repeated Hagrid. "Listen, come and see me later. I'm not promising I'll tell you anything mind, but don't go rabbiting about it in here. Students aren't supposed to know. They'll think I told you."

"See you later, then," said Harry with a smug look on his face. Hagrid left.

"I thought we explained that anything you find out, Snape can learn from you," I said, exasperated.

"Snape has a head start on us," noted Harry. "We're not trying to find out anything Snape wouldn't already know."

"You already let slip there's more than one Stone just now," I said. "Hagrid might not have already know that part."

Harry had the decency to look sheepish. "We'll have to talk over what's safe to ask about before we visit HAgrid," he said after a moment.

"What was he holding behind his back?" asked Hermione, changing the subject.

"Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?" Harry emphasized the singular,, reminding himself to be more careful.

In no hurry to resume studying, Ron volunteered, "I'm going to see what section he was in."

Ron went off and returned with an armload of books. "Dragons," he urgently whispered. "Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons! Look at these. Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland. From Egg to Inferno, a Dragon Keeper's Guide."

"Hagrid's always wanted a dragon," said Harry as I touched the red stone at the tip of my wand to the pile of books Ron had brought then brought it up to my temple, assimilating their contents. "He told me the first time I ever met him."

"But it's against our laws," exclaimed Ron. "Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlock's convention of 1709. Everyone knows that. It's hard to stop muggles from noticing us if we're keeping dragons in the back garden. Anyway, you can't tame dragons. It's dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie's got off wild ones in Romania."

"But there aren't wild dragons in Britain?" asked Harry with some concern.

"Of course there are," declared Ron, heedless of Harry's tone. "Common Welsh Green and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job hushing them up, I can tell you. Our kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who've spotted them to make them forget."

"Make them forget?" repeated Sloth, horrified. "You just erase their memories to keep your secrets?"

Ron was taken aback by Sloth's extreme reaction and stammered, "It doesn't do them any harm. The ministry has experts who make sure the memory charms are done properly."

"Losing their memories is harm," I said with some ice in my tone.

Seeing Ron getting double teamed, Harry came to Ron's defense. "There's a reason the Ministry does it that way. Right, Ron?"

"Of course," said Ron, Harry's support helping him regain his footing. "The International Statute of Secrecy means they can't just let them go after muggles see something magical. With a memory charm, the muggles are back to living their lives, happy as you please. No one needs to threaten them to keep quiet and they don't need to live with whatever happened."

"And they won't know they need to do something to protect themselves from another dragon attack," I retorted.

"The Ministry makes sure there won't be another attack before they do the memory charms," said Ron.

"Does anyone ask the muggles if they want to forget?" asked Sloth.

"We aren't going to settle this here," said Hermione, trying to play peacemaker. "Let's just figure out what we're going to do about Hagrid." 

* * *

Hagrid's curtains were drawn when we arrived at his hut at the edge of the forest. The groundskeeper verified it was us before opening his door and letting us in. He offered us tea and sandwiches.

"So, you wanted to ask me something?" he said.

"Yes," said Harry. "We were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Philosopher's Stone appart from Fluffy."

"Of course I can't," said Hagrid. "Number one, I don't know meself. Number two, you know too much already, so I wouldn't tell you if I could. That Stone's here for a good reason. It was almost stolen out of Gringotts. I suppose you've worked that out and all. Beats me how you even know about Fluffy."

"Oh come on, Hagrid," pressed Hermione sweetly. "You might not want to tell us, but you do know. You know everything that goes on round here. We only wondered who had done the guarding, really. We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, appart from you." She was sticking to the plan, limiting it to things Snape would already know.

"I don't suppose it could hurt to tell you that," mused Hagrid, puffing up from the praise. "Let's see, he borrowed Fluffy from me. Then some of the teachers did enchantments. Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick, Professor McGonagall, Professor Quirrell. And Dumbledore did something himself of course. Hang on. I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape."

"Snape?" demanded Harry in surprise.

"Yeah," replied Hagrid. "You're not still on about that are you? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone. He's not about to steal it."

Given the division of information Dumbledore employed when Sloth and I set up our protections, it was likely no one person besides Dumbledore knew anything more than the part of the defenses he set up. Snape had no doubt spent most of the year getting clues about the protections out of the other professors.

"You're the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy, aren't you, Hagrid?" confirmed Harry. "And you wouldn't tell anyone, not even one of the teachers?"

"Not a soul knows except me and Dumbledore," said Hagrid, which put everyone's mind at ease.

"Well, that's something," said Harry. "Hagrid, can we have a window open? It's boiling."

"Can't, Harry. Sorry." Hagrid glanced at his roaring fireplace with a black dragon egg being incubated in the center of the flames.

"Hagrid, what is that?" asked Harry.

"Ah, that's, er..." started Hagrid.

"Where did you get it?" asked Ron, going in for a closer look. "It must've cost you a fortune."

"Won it. Last night. I was down in the village, having a few drinks and got into a game of cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad to get rid of it, to be honest."

"But what are you going to do with it when it's hatched," asked Hermione.

"A dragon would be a nasty surprise for the Stone's thief," I noted. "Especially if he thinks he knows everything he's up against."

"That's no good," said Hagrid. "He'll just be a baby. Anyway, I've been doing some reading. Got this out of the library. Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit. It's a bit out of date, of course, but it's all in there. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on 'em, see. And when it hatches, feed it a bucket of brandy mixed with chicken blood every half our. And see here, how to recognize different eggs. What I've got here is a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."

"Hagrid," declared Hermione, exasperated, "you live in a wooden house."

"I can fireproof the place," I offered.

"You'd do that for me?" asked Hagrid, touched.

"I want to see it hatched too," I said, looking at the egg in awe. "Alchemists back home have tried to make chimeras that look like dragons, but even when they get something that looks superficially right, the result isn't stable, and they don't live too long. To see a full, living system..."

"It is against the law here, Greed," said Sloth gently.

"It's already broken," I agrued, gesturing at the egg. "There's no reason not to see this trhough. Ron, what do you say we make this a teaching moment?"

"Teaching?" asked Hagrid.

"I studied alchemy back in the old country," I said. Lies were always harder to keep track of than the truth. "I've been teaching Ron."

"So that's how you know about Flamel and the Stone," said Hagrid.

"Ron," I said, "combustion of wood involves the complex hydrocarbons reacting with the oxygen in the air. Primary products of the chemical reaction are water and carbon dioxide. How do we remodel the internal chemistry to make the wood less flammable without changing the elemental composition?"

"Strengthen the bonds of the hydrocarbons, so it'll take more energy to get them to break apart and react with the oxygen?" Ron guessed.

"That'd do it," I acknowledged. "Take your chalk out and do the job."

Ron got a piece of chalk I'd had him carrying around out of his pocket and he slowly, painstakingly drew a transmutation circle on Hagrid's wall. I looked it over when he was done and gave him a nod. Ron placed his hands on the circle and it glowed with a brilliant golden light. A wave of gold light passed through all of the hut's walls, floor, and ceiling.

I took a burning stick from the fireplace and tossed it on the floor to demonstrate that Ron's alchemy had the desired effect.

"That was amazing, Ron," declared Hermione, who was still a little jealous he was being taught and she wasn't. Sloth had soothed those feelings a bit by giving Hermione the background readings in things like chemistry that Ron was getting, just without the actual alchemy itself. This was the first time the others had seen Ron show off what he could do. 

* * *

A few days later, Harry got an owl from Hagrid letting him know the egg was hatching. Harry passed the letter on to Sloth and I at breakfast, and we agreed to head down to Hagrid's after classes. I hoped we wouldn't miss anything being in class, but it was less likely someone would notice something amiss if we didn't miss classes, and that was safer for Hagrid.

Right after classes, we rushed down to Hagrid's, meeting up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione on the way. Hagrid rushed us inside. The egg was on a table, covered in deep cracks. At length, the baby dragon split open the egg and flopped onto the table.

It was gorgeous. The creature had a whip-thin body and large, barbed wings. Its entire body was jet black, except for its bright orange eyes. Shortly after emerging, it sneezed, shooting a handful of sparks from its wide nostrils.

"Isn't he beautiful?" asked Hagrid, rhetorically. He moved to stroke its head affectionately, and it snapped its fanged jaw at his fingers. "Bless him. He knows his mommy."

"Hagrid, how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?" asked Hermione.

Before he could answer, he leapt to his feet and bolted to the window.

"What's the matter?" asked Sloth.

"Someone was looking through the gap in the curtains. It's a kid. He's running back up to the school," said Hagrid.

Harry got to the door, while I headed for the window. Of all the people to have seen the dragon. It was Draco Malfoy. 

* * *

On the plus side, Draco seemed to enjoy holding the fact that he could report this over our heads far too much to give up that by just reporting Hagrid immediately. He was practically giddy to have something over us after having learned the hard way threats and violence got him nowhere.

We spent every moment we could spare with Hagrid, alternately helping care for the newborn dragon that had tripped in size within a week, and trying to talk Hagrid into getting rid of it before Malfoy tired of playing games and tried to use what he knew to get Hagrid fired and us expelled.

"Just let him go. Set him free," argued Harry.

"I can't. He's too little. He'll die," replied Hagrid in a worried tone. "I've decided to call him Norbert. He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where's mommy?"

Norbert didn't respond.

"Hagrid, give it two weeks and Norbert's going to be as long as your house," declared Harry. "Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment."

"I- I know I can't keep him forever," said Hagrid pathetically, "but I can't just dump him. I can't."

Sloth, Hermione, and I were on lookout duty for this conversation. Last time, Malfoy had just peeked in and saw. This time, he might bring a camera or another student who'd back him up so he'd have more proof. As long as it was just Malfoy's word, this situation could be resolved by getting rid of Norbert. With more proof, he could make trouble even after Norbert was gone.

"Charlie!" said Harry, turning to Ron.

"You're losing it, too. I'm Ron, remember?"

"No, Charlie. Your brother Charlie, in Romania studying dragons. We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!"

"Brilliant!" declared Ron. "How about it, Hagrid?"

"I don't know," Hagrid hesitated.

"This is about what's best for Norbert," said Sloth from her position at the window. "He's stuck in this hutt all the time. He deserves to be somewhere he can spread his wings and fly."

That did the trick, and Hagrid said with tears in his eyes, "Go ahead and send an owl to Charlie." 

* * *

It was a week before we heard back. Fortunately, Charlie was on board with dragon smuggling. His letter indicated we were to get Norbert to the top of the astronomy tower on Sunday. Harry figured we could fit two people and the dragon under his invisibility cloak, and be done with this.

Ron, meanwhile, had been bitten on his hand while helping feed Norbert. I got him someplace private and unwrapped the bandage to take a look.

"The Norwegian Ridgeback's bite is venomous," I told him, relating information I'd assimilated from those books the day we'd found out about the dragon egg. His hand had already swollen by the time he showed me.

"Is it safe to go to Madam Pomfrey?" he asked. "Will she recognize a dragon bite?"

"No need for that," I replied and pointed my wand at his hand. The array along the wand's length lit up and glowed blue, and Ron's hand shrank back down to normal size. The puncture marks closed with a few sparks of blue alchemic light. Inside his body, the venom itself was broken down into harmless compounds.

"Useful, that," said Ron, opening and closing his hand.

"Bioalchemy is one of the most difficult branches of alchemy," I told him. "We'll get to it eventually, but you're a long ways off from that."

When we went to tell Hagrid the plan, we found Fang outside with a bandaged tail. I kneeled down to heal Fang while the others explained the plan to Hagrid through a window, since Norbert had gotten too aggressive to be around us safely. 

* * *

Sloth and I were the strongest members of the group, physically, so it was agreed the two of us would help carry Norbert's crate. Sloth could occupy the same space as someone else using her powers, so that left room for an additional person. Since it was Harry's cloak, he was the obvious choice.

Sloth's powers let us walk straight through the entrance hall where Pevees the poltergeist was playing tennis against a wall. I could feel Harry flinch as Sloth caused the tennis ball to pass through us. He wasn't as used to trusting in Sloth's abilities as I was.

Norbert was in his crate when we arrived at Hagrid's.

"He's gt lots of rats and brandy for the journey, and I've packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely. Bye bye, Norbert! Mommy will never forget you," sobbed Hagrid.

We draped the cloak over the crate and climbed under. Sloth and I were on the same side of the crate, since Harry wasn't comfortable occupying the same space as one of us. That made carrying the crate more awkward than it needed to be, but we managed. In no time, we had set aside the cloak at the top of the astronomy tower and were waiting nervously.

It was almost an hour before Charlie's friends arrived on broomsticks. They seemed in good humor for illegal dragon smugglers and happily showed off the harness they'd prepared for Norbert's crate. We all breathed a sigh of relief when they'd flow out of sight. Now, Malfoy's threats to tell someone about the dragon wouldn't mean anything if he followed through.

We were practically delirious with relief, and eager to get back to our dorms and back to a dragon free routine. That's the only explanation I have for why we forgot to get under the invisibility cloak before we left. And worse luck, Filch was standing at the bottom of the stairs down from the tower.

"Well, well, well, we are in trouble," he declared gleefully. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Having a competent healer in the group changes a few things. In this chapter, it means that with Ron not needing to be in the hospital wing, Draco never gets his hands on the letter from Charlie. This means he was never caught out of bed, and our heroes were the only ones getting into trouble as a result.


	7. Chapter 10: Enter the Dark Lord

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 10) Enter the Dark Lord  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

One by one, Filch woke each of our heads of house, dropping us off with a brief explanation of where he'd found us. He could have waited until morning, but seemingly chose to wake them up so they'd be in a fouler mood when considering the situation. I don't know what Harry and Sloth were dealing with from McGonagall and Sprout. All I knew was that I was in Professor Flitwick's office and he was looking at me with a profoundly hurt expression.

"Headmaster Dumbledore made a lot of special exceptions so you could come to Hogwarts, you know," opened Flitwick. "I've never even heard of Amestris, but I know the British Ministry doesn't have any sort of official exchange program. Dumbledore spoke to the Ministry on your behalf. He let you in to this year despite registration having been closed already. He even let you bring that extraordinary dog of yours."

Not to mention he was arranging to protect my Philosopher's Stone while I was in this world. And he'd vouched for me and Sloth on our arrival. All that plus the occlumency lessons added up to quite a bit I owed the man. I kept my eyes downcast.

"After all that, and I still find you out of bed at one in the morning, flouting school rules. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"No, sir," I said dejectedly.

Professor Flitwick sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I like you, Marcus. You're a good student, and I know you work harder to get the marks you do than you want to admit to anyone. But I can't overlook this. You need a reminder that even with all your special exemptions, the rules still apply to you. You'll serve a detention, and you've just lost fifty points for Ravenclaw. Now, off to bed."

"Yes, Professor," I said, getting up. "I'm sorry."

* * *

Harry and Sloth had gotten it just as bad from McGonagall and Sprout. On the plus side, none of us had cracked and told them what we were up to. The fact that we'd protected Hagrid was my sole comfort as the other Ravenclaws went back to ostracizing and bullying me. At one point, they got into my trunk while I was out of the dorm and hid my things across half the castle. I ended up locking it with alchemy from then on.

Sloth was more popular in Hufflepuff then I was in Ravenclaw, but that just meant she had more to lose. She got her homework done quicker after that, but only because her friends in her house weren't talking to her anymore.

Harry got the worst of it. Until our midnight outing, it had looked like Gryffindor would break Slytherin's six year winning streak for the House Cup. The only students who were happy with Harry were the Slytherins.

We all just buckled down and studied, hoping to finish off the term. In time, the hard feelings would fade. I personally just hoped I'd get a chance to earn back Professor Flitwick's trust.

With exams a week away, Ron, Hermione, Sloth, and I were in the library studying. Harry came in and urgently reported a half overheard conversation involving Quirrell.

"Snape's done it, then," concluded Ron. "If Quirrell's told him how to break his anti dark force spell-"

"There's still Fluffy," interrupted Hermione.

"Maybe Snape's found out how to get past him without asking Hagrid. I bet there's a book somewhere in here telling you how to get past a giant, three headed dog," argued Ron. "So, what do we do, Harry?"

"Go to Dumbledore," interjected Hermione. "That's what we should have done ages ago. If we try anything ourselves, we'll be thrown out for sure."

"We don't have a way to talk to Dumbledore without tipping off Snape," I argued.

"And the other teachers won't believe a word against him without proof," added Sloth. "Remember how Hagrid acted after the broomstick incident? He was the one who said that jinx was powerful dark magic and he still brushed off it being Snape."

"Quirrell's too scared to back us up," said Harry. "Snape's only got to say he doesn't know how the troll got in at Halloween and that he was nowhere near the third floor. Who do you think they'll believe, him or us? Even if we could tell Dumbledore he'll think we made it up to get him sacked. Filch wouldn't help us if his life depended on it. He's too friendly with Snape, and the more students get thrown out the better, he'll think."

"If we just do a bit of poking around," started Ron.

"No, we've done enough poking around," said Harry, who pointedly picked up a map of Jupiter to study.

* * *

Ironically, our detention for being out of bed at night was to take place at level o'clock at night. We were all to meet Filch at the castle's entrance hall. He was waiting for us with a lantern and a nasty grin.

"Follow me," he said, leading us out into the darkness. "I bet you'll think twice about breaking a school rule again, eh? Oh yes, hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me. It's just a pity they let the old punishments die out. Hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days. I've got the chains still in my office. Keep 'em well oiled in case they're ever needed. Right, off we go, and don't think of running off, now. It'll be worse for you if you do."

We trudged along in silence. Filch was enjoying this too much, and none of us were going to give him the satisfaction of rising to his bait. It turned out, we were going to Hagrid's hut, and my pulse skyrocketed. My mind raced through worst case scenarios. Had Hagrid been found out, and Filch was taking us to see him get sacked? I wouldn't put it past the sadist.

I breathed a sigh of relief when Hagrid called out, "Is that you, Filch? Hurry up. I want to get started."

Filch rounded on us, sneering, "I suppose you think that you'll be enjoying yourself with that oaf? Well, think again, boy. It's into the forest you're going, and I'm much mistaken if you'll all come out in one piece."

Being immortal made it easy to brush off his attempts to frighten us. Hagrid arrived a moment later with Fang. Hagrid had his crossbow at the ready.

"About time," he said. "I been waiting for half an hour already. All right, Harry, Sloth, Greed?"

"I shouldn't be too friendly with them, Hagrid," said Filch. "They're here to be punished, after all."

"That why you're late, is it? Been lecturing them? It's not your place to do that. You've done your bit. I'll take over from here."

Filch replied, "I'll be back at dawn, for what's left of them." Then he headed back to the castle.

"What do we do?" I asked, eyeing Hagrid's readied weapon.

"Right, then. Now, listen carefully, 'cause it's dangerous what we're gonna do tonight, and I don't want no one taking risks. Follow me over here a moment."

He led us to a narrow trail that led deeper into the forest and continued, "Look there. See that stuff shining on the ground? Silvery stuff? That's unicorn blood. There's a unicorn in there been hurt badly by something. This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We're gonna try and find the poor thing. We might have to put it out of its misery."

Turning to Sloth, I said, "Ultimate Shield. You don't want to risk what happened with the troll against whatever's out there." I pulled up my sleeve to reveal to her the grey discoloration that turned our flesh as hard as diamond. I'd drawn the Ultimate Shield over every part of my body covered by my robes. Sloth nodded her intent to do the same.

"There's nothing that lives in the forest that'll hurt you if you're with me or Fang," Hagrid assured us. "And keep to the path. Right, now, we're gonna split into two parties and follow the trail in different directions. There's blood all over the place. It must've been staggering around since last night at least."

"You go with Harry and keep him safe," I told Sloth. "I'll go with Fang."

"All right, but I warn you, he's a coward," reminded Hagrid. "Now, if any of us finds the unicorn, we'll send up green sparks, right? Get your wands out and practice now."

I went through a few reactions before I found one that let off quite the same color and brightness as the sparks from Harry's wand. At length, Hagrid was satisfied.

"That's it. And if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks and we'll all come and find you. So, be careful. Let's go."

I broke from the others at the first fork in the path. We followed the trail of silvery blood, pausing occasionally to scan the skyline for any sign of sparks form the other party. Fang was a competent tracker, but I wished I had Loki with me in the forest. The blood trail was getting thicker, but I couldn't tell if that meant we were getting closer to where the attack happened, or where the unicorn had gone.

Half an hour later, I got my answer. The creature's corpse was lying in a clearing. I'd reached for my wand to send up the sparks when a cloaked figure crawled out of the shadows and into the clearing. Something about the way it moved was wrong, like the joints going the wrong way. I froze and watched as the figure leaned over the dead unicorn. I could hear it sucking blood from the wound in its side.

Fang let out a howl of terror and bolted. The creature looked up at me in alarm. Red eyes were set above a mouth that dribbled silvery unicorn blood down its front. I was even more surprised and unnerved when the eye contact with this thing was accompanied by an attempt to penetrate my mind. Dumbledore's occlumency training saved me from that as the thing raised itself upright and moved to charge at me.

I was alone with a monster. No point pulling punches for the sake of appearances. I stomped my left foot, and a spike of stone rose out of the ground in front of me, accompanied by blue sparks of alchemic energy. The creature was impaled through the chest. It wasn't dead. Rather, it pulled itself off my transmuted spoke and repeated its rush.

My wand was in my hand, and I activated the array. A three foot beam of blue alchemic light extended from just past the red stone at the wand's tip. The reaction of the blade would deconstruct whatever it came in contact with. The red stone would compensate for any gaps in my understanding of this creature's composition.

I didn't get a chance to use the weapon. A centaur galloped onto the scene, leaped over me, and barreled into the creature. Outnumbered, it beat a retreat, and I lost track of it in the shadows.

"Are you alright?" asked the blond haired, gold bodied centaur.

"Yes," I said, deactivating my alchemic blade. "Thanks."

"You had better get back to Hagrid," he added after a long moment. "The forest is not safe at this time. Especially for the Potter boy."

"Harry? What does he have to do with this?"

Suddenly, another pair of centaurs burst into the clearing. One black haired, the other red.

"Firenze!" yelled the black haired one at the centaur that'd come to my aid. "What are you doing?"

"He came with the Potter boy," said Firenze. "The quicker they leave the forest the better."

"What have you been telling him?" demanded the black haired centaur. "Remember, Firenze, we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens. Have we not read what is to come in the movements of the planets?"

"I'm sure Firenze thought he was acting for the best," said the red haired centaur, trying to placate his companion.

"For the best?!" repeated the black haired one. "What is that to do with us? Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold! It is not our business to rush around like donkeys after stray humans in our forest!"

"Do you not see that unicorn?" yelled Firenze as he reared up on his hind legs. "Do you not understand why it was killed? Or have the planets not let you in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this forest, Bane. Yes, with humans alongside me if I must."

Firenze turned, took me by the hand, hauled me onto his back and galloped away from the other two all in a single, elegant motion.

"Thank you again," I said when we were alone. "My name is Greed, by the way. You seem to know what's going on out here. Can you tell me?"

"Mind your head," was all he said, and I ducked beneath a low branch. We traveled a ways in silence before he asked, "Greed, do you know what unicorn blood is used for?"

"No," I admitted. "It wasn't in any of our first year books."

"That is because it is a monstrous thing to slay a unicorn. Only one who has nothing to lose and everything to gain would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips."

"That's why it didn't die when I impaled it on that spike," I realized. "What sort of curse are we talking about here?"

"Death is preferable," said Firenze simply. "Unless all you need is to stay alive long enough to drink something else, something that will bring you back to full power, something that will mean you can never die. Greed, do you know what is hidden in the school at this very moment?"

"I do," I said guardedly. "You mean that thing is after it?"

"Can you think of nobody who has waited many years to return to power, who has clung to life, awaiting their chance?" prompted Firenze.

It was dangerous to Harry in particular. Something from years in the past. The dark wizard who'd given Harry his famous scar. Voldemort was after the Philosopher's Stone, and planned to use it to get a new body that can never die. For all this world was alchemically backward, homunculi had been created in the past.

"This is bad," I said.

"Greed!" called out Sloth on sighting me.

I waved and dismounted the centaur. "I found the unicorn," I said, jamming my thumb behind me. "It's already dead."

Hagrid went to check on the unicorn while Firenze looked long and hard at Harry.

"Good luck, Harry Potter. The planets have been read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times." Then he turned and left.

"What was that all about?" asked Harry.

"We've got bigger problems than Snape," I said in a low voice. "When you get back to the Gryffindor dorms, tell Ron and Hermione we ned to meet. Meanwhile, stay close. Something in the forest doesn't like you at all." 

* * *

My night was restless. I kept replaying the brief fight in my mind. It wasn't the first time I'd fought something that refused to die, but I'd gotten used to knowing what I was up against. While I was pretty sure the unicorn blood was what saved it, the truth was I knew nothing of the enemy's powers or capabilities.

As early as I thought I could get away with, I took Loki and headed for the entrance to Gryffindor tower. Sloth arrived soon after. I resisted the temptation to start explaining while we waited for the others. It wasn't long before a portrait of a heavyset woman swung aside and the three Gryffindors emerged.

"What happened out there?" asked Ron immediately.

"Not here," I said, and led them into an empty classroom. After verifying it was free of portraits, ghosts, and poltergeists, I clapped my hands and removed the door, blending the former entrance into just another stone wall.

"Does what happened last night have anything to do with this?" asked Harry, holding up his invisibility cloak. "It showed up in my bed with a note that said, 'Just in case.'"

"Harry, what do you know about Voldemort?" I asked.

Ron winced and hissed, "Stop saying the name!"

"Because he's what I saw in the forest," I said.

There was silence as they took that information in.

"How do you know it was him?" asked Hermione.

"Firenze the centaur told me," I replied. "Voldemort's weak, surviving on unicorn blood, but if he gets his hands on the Philosopher's Stone, he'll use it to not just come back, but to make himself immortal."

"Stop saying the name," Ron repeated with more urgency.

"Why?" I snapped.

"The last war," said Ron. "Folks who called him by his name instead of 'You-Know-Who', even in private, even when no one could hear, ended up targeted."

"I'm already targeted," noted Harry, touching the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. "Snape wants the Stone for Voldemort. And Voldemort's waiting in the forest. And all this time, we thought Snape just wanted to get rich."

"Did the centaurs tell you anything else?" asked Sloth.

"Not all the centaurs," I said, shaking my head, "just Firenze. I think Bane was mad at him for telling me as much as he did. Apparently they have a rule about interfering with predestined events."

"So, all I've got to wait for now is Snape to steal the Stone," said Harry, increasingly agitated. "Then Voldemort will be able to come and finish me off. Well, I suppose Bane'll be happy."

Hermione said, "Harry, everyone says Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of. With Dumbledore around, You-Know-Who won't touch you. Anyway, who says the centaurs are right? It sounds like fortune telling to me, and Professor McGonagall says that's a very imprecise branch of magic."

"They know about the Stone," I argued. "Either way, we ned to be ready in case the worst should happen. I think I know what he plans to do with the Stone."

"He's going to make a homunculus body," guessed Sloth.

I nodded and explained, "Homunculi are nearly impossible to kill. I'm sort of an expert, and I only know two ways to kill one permanently. That's why I turned myself into one. We don't age, and our bodies regenerate from injuries in proportion to the alchemic amplifiers we consume. I've seen a homunculus eat a Philosopher's Stone, then regenerate his neck so fast, a decapitation strike was healed before the blade was all the way through."

"But you do know how to kill him if it comes to that," prompted Ron nervously.

"One way involves luring him into a specially prepared transmutation circle," I said. "Which isn't easy to do to someone who doesn't even have any other powers."

"And the other?" asked Ron.

"Requires we find his original human remains. If we lose that Stone, we need to find that corpse." 

* * *

Fortunately, Fluffy remained an impossible obstacle. We doubled our checks on the third floor corridor, and he was always there, standing watch. Exams were more of a time sink for Snape than for us. We were able to break into teams and keep watch on the corridor while we quizzed one another on our subjects. Snape had seven years of students to prepare and administer an exam for. Even as unpopular as we were of late, we'd hear if Snape went missing during exams. Meanwhile, we traded off nights keeping watch on the corridor under Harry's invisibility cloak.

The exams themselves proved easier than I was expecting. I forgot I was in a class full of eleven year olds, and had prepared for something on par with the state alchemy exam. The written portion, I finished in under half the allotted time, and had plenty of time to check my answers.

The practical portion, I again expected something far worse than we were subjected to. Though, given that the practical portion of my last exam had involved dodging bombs and weathering a gas main explosion, I really shouldn't have been using that as a standard. Professor Flitwick had us make a pineapple tap dance, and the question for me wasn't if I could do it, but which of the half dozen methods I'd worked out over the year I should use.

Transfiguration was even easier. Turning a mouse into a snuffbox was still a huge violation of equivalency, but organic matter to inorganic was still easier than the other way around. Since we got style points, I included a decorative engraving of Loki leaping through flames.

Brewing the forgetfulness potion was the hardest of the practicals, since we were doing it from memory in a room full of people brewing forgetfulness potions. On the plus side, Snape looked very engaged in judging the results, which I hoped meant he'd stay distracted from the Stone through exams.

Once the last of our exams were in, I joined the others down by the lake.

"You want to go over our exam papers and see how we did, don't you, Greed?" asked Hermione as I approached.

"There's no point," I said. "It's out of our hands now."

"I'm going to see if I can make some ice. It's too hot out here," said Ron, who began drawing a transmutation circle in the dirt near the water.

"I wish I knew what this means," burst Harry as he rubbed at the scar on his forehead. "My scar keeps hurting. It's happened before, but never as often as this."

"Go to Madam Pomfrey," said Hermione.

"I'm not ill. I think it's a warning. It means danger's coming."

"We know Voldemort's nearby," I said, eliciting a flinch from Ron that forced him to restart his transmutation circle. "He's the one that gave you that scar, right?"

Harry nodded.

"Harry, relax," said Ron. "We've been watching the corridor at night, Snape's swamped with exams during the day, and Hermione's right. The Stones are safe as long as Dumbledore's around. Anyway, we've never had any proof Snape found out how to get past Fluffy. He nearly had his leg ripped off once. He's not going to try again in a hurry. And Neville will play Quidditch for England before Hagrid lets Dumbledore down."

"I just can't shake this feeling I've forgotten something important," said Harry.

"It's been a stressful year," said Sloth. "Between everything we've been trying to do this year, we never did get a chance to learn how to swim."

"It's definitely warm enough," I said. "Who's up for it?" I asked.

Suddenly, Harry jumped to his feet.

"Getting some trunks?" I asked as I pulled my robe over my head.

"I've just thought of something," said Harry urgently. "We've got to go and see Hagrid. Now."

With only one longing glance back toward the lake, we were off after Harry.

"Why?" asked Hermione as we rushed off.

As he ran, Harry explained, "Don't you think it's a bit odd that what Hagrid wants more than anything else is a dragon, and a stranger turns up who just happens to have a dragon egg in his pocket? How many people wander around with dragon eggs if it's against wizard law? Lucky they found Hagrid, don't you think? Why didn't I see it before?"

"You're right," I gasped. The dragon wasn't a coincidence. It was part of the plot all along.

"What are you talking about?" asked Ron.

Walking him through it would take longer than confirming it would, so we just pressed on to Hagrid's. We found him outside, and he greeted us on our approach.

"Hello. Finished your exams? Got time for a drink?"

Ron started to accept, but Harry cut him off. "No, we're in a hurry. Hagrid, I've got to ask you something. You know that night you won Norbert? What did the stranger you were playing cards with look like?"

"Dunno," replied Hagrid. "He wouldn't take his cloak off. It's not that unusual. You get a lot of funny folk in the Hog's Head. That's the pub down in the village. Mighta been a dragon dealer, mightn't he? I never saw his face. He kept his hood up."

By that point, Ron had put it together and looked as worried as the rest of us. Harry pushed for further confirmation.

"What did you talk to him about, Hagrid? Did you mention Hogwarts at all?"

"Mighta come up. Yeah, he asked what I did and I told him I was gamekeeper here. He asked a bit about the sort of creatures I look after, so I told him, and I said what I really wanted was a dragon. And then... I can't remember too well 'cause he kept buying me drinks. Let's see, yeah, then he said he had the dragon egg and we could play cards for it if I wanted, but he had to be sure I could handle it. He didn't want it to go to any old home, so I told him after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy."

Again, Harry pressed for confirmation. "And did he... Did he seem interested in Fluffy?"

"Well, yeah. How many three headed dogs do you meet, even around Hogwarts? So I told him, Fluffy's a piece of cake if you know how to calm him down. Just play him a bit of music and he'll go straight off to sleep."

At this point, even Hagrid seemed to realize what had happened. The rest of us were sprinting back to the castle.

"I shouldn'ta told you that," Hagrid called after us. "Forget I said it! Where're you going?"

"We've got to go to Dumbledore," said Harry as we arrived in the main entry hall. "Hagrid told that stranger how to get past Fluffy, and it was either Snape or Voldemort under that cloak. It must've been easy once he got Hagrid drunk. I just hope Dumbledore believes us. Firenze might back us up if Bane doesn't stop him. Where's Dumbledore's office?"

"This way," said Sloth, starting off.

"What are you five doing inside?" asked Professor McGonagall.

"We need to see the Headmaster, immediately," I said. "The Philosopher's Stone is in danger."

She dropped the books she was carrying in shock, but recovered her composure quickly. "Professor Dumbledore received an urgent owl from the Ministry of Magic. He left ten minutes ago, and will be back tomorrow. I don't know how you found out about the Stone, but rest assured, no one can possibly steal it. It's too well protected."

"But, Professor-" began Harry before being cut off.

"Potter, I know what I'm talking about. I suggest you all go back outside and enjoy the sunshine." She gathered up her books and left.

"It's tonight," declared Harry when McGonagall was out of earshot. "Snape's going through the trapdoor tonight. He's found out everything he needs and now he's got Dumbledore out of the way. He sent that note. I bet the Ministry of Magic will get a real shock when Dumbledore shows up."

"Okay, so-" I fell silent at Hermione's gasp. Turning, I saw Snape had come up when we weren't looking. How long had he been there?

"You shouldn't be inside on a day like this," he said with a self satisfied smile.

"We were-" Harry started to say when Snape interrupted him.

"You want to be careful. Hanging around like this, people will think you're up to something. And Gryffindor really can't afford to lose any more points, can it? Be warned, Potter. Any more nighttime wanderings and I will personally make sure you are expelled. Good day to you."

As Snape left, Harry whispered, "Right, here's what we're going to do. One of us has to keep an eye on Snape. Wait outside the staff room and follow him if he leaves it. Greed, you'd better do that."

"Okay," I agreed.

"You can pretend to be waiting for Professor Flitwick," suggested Ron.

"The rest of us should guard the corridor," said Sloth.

"Take Loki," I suggested. "He'll be more use on guard duty than tailing Snape." 

* * *

Outside the staff room, I leaned against a wall and worked through some equations in my notebook. I was convinced some of the transfiguration formulas we'd studied could be adapted to model the energy usage for red stones and give me a better idea when they'd burn out. I glanced up occasionally to make sure no one had left the staff room.

Half an hour later, Snape emerged. "What are you doing here, Oren?"

"Just waiting for Professor Flitwick." I felt the legilimency attempt, and projected a false impression of attempting to blank my mind so Snape wouldn't know how badly I wanted to apologize to Flitwick for what happened at the astronomy tower. To complete the illusion that he'd penetrated my mental defenses, I included the hope that no one would find out about the dragon.

Snape didn't get any deeper than I intended him to, and that led to a smug smile spreading across his face. "Why don't I go get him for you?"

He popped back into the staff room and emerged with Professor Flitwick.

"Marcus, is there something you need?" he asked.

I glanced over at Snape, who was watching the exchange with amused interest. I had to play this out.

"I wanted to say," I began, "I'm sorry for disappointing you. Is there anything I can do to earn your forgiveness, Professor?"

Flitwick was taken aback and replied, "My boy, you did your detention, and you've kept your nose out of trouble since. That's all I could ask for."

With a disgusted look on his face, Snape left, having found the exchange less entertaining than he'd hoped. Unfortunately, Flitwick was still talking and I couldn't break off to follow Snape.

"In fact, I probably shouldn't tell you this, but your charms exam is tied for the top of the class with Miss Granger. All those late nights studying paid off. You've been a delight to have in my class and in my house, and I look forward to having you in my charms class again next year."

There was no hope of catching up with Snape after that. I had to rely on the others to guard the hall. Meanwhile, I decided to try another angle.

"Do you know a way to get in touch with Professor Dumbledore? Professor McGonagall said he left for the Ministry of Magic a bit ago. He's been holding on to something of mine for me, and I need to have it back."

"He's rarely gone long in his trips to the Ministry," assured Flitwick, "but if it's urgent, why don't you send him an owl?"

"Is there anything faster?" I asked. "I know muggle radios won't work here, but-"

"It'll be fine," said Flitwick in a comforting tone. "I'm sure, whatever it is, you'll have it back before the end of term feast." 

* * *

"Something is very wrong with the communications infrastructure of the wizarding world," I muttered to myself as I wrote out a note to Dumbledore warning hm that Voldemort knew how to bypass the Stone's defenses, and that he should return to Hogwarts immediately. Once the owl was off, I left the owlery to meet up with the others at the corridor.

The corridor was unguarded. Questioning the nearby portraits revealed that McGonagall had found them, lost her temper, and run them off. I checked to make sure Fluffy was still awake before going to find the others. I tracked them down and explained how I'd lost Snape.

"Well, that's it, then," said Harry when I finished. "I'm going out tonight, and I'm going to try and get to the Stones first."

"You're mad," said Ron.

"You can't," said Hermione. "Snape had all year to figure out what's down there and prepare. All we know how to get past is Fluffy."

"We have to try!" exclaimed Harry. "If Snape gets hold of one of those Stones, Voldemort's coming back! He'll flatten Hogwarts or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! I'm going through that trap door tonight, and nothing any of you say is going to stop me! Voldemort killed my parents, remember?"

"We're with you," I said, putting an arm around Sloth and a hand on Loki's head. "I don't even see how we could get in trouble for it. You're just helping me take back my own property."

"We'll use the invisibility cloak," said Harry, determined. "It's just lucky I got it back."

"But will it cover all six of us?" asked Ron.

"It will if you stop being so squeamish and let me stack us all up in the space for one person," said Sloth.

"All of you?" asked Harry.

"Oh, come off it," said Ron. "You don't think we'd let you go alone?"

"Of course not," added Hermione. "How do you think you'd get the Stone without us? I'd better go and look through my books. There might be something useful." 

* * *

Author's comments:  
I've never found Voldemort to be a particularly threatening villain. Here, I've tried to emphasize the unknown quality of the threat they're facing by using the unicorn blood.


	8. Chapter 11: Retrieving the Stones

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 11) Retrieving the Stones  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

The other Ravenclaws were used to my late night studying by now, so no one questioned the fact that I was reading in the common room with Loki at my feet when the last of them went to bed. Once I was alone, I stepped out the door with Loki, the arrays on my shoes muffling our footsteps to the point of inaudibility.

"Neville caught us sneaking out," whispered Harry from beneath the invisibility cloak. "Hermione paralyzed him and left him in the common room. I don't know how long we have until someone finds him."

I nodded, then scurried under the cloak with Loki. Traveling under an invisibility cloak with five people and a dog was a strange experience. Sloth ensured that we all passed through each other, but we were all touching the same cloak, so it felt like it was constantly catching and billowing on something. We bypassed Peeves thanks ot the combination of Harry's cloak and my shoes making us virtually undetectable.

When we reached the door to the third floor corridor, it was open already. "Well, there you are. Snape's already got past Fluffy," said Harry. "If you want to go back, I won't blame you. You can take the cloak. I won't need it now."

"Don't be stupid," said Ron.

"We're coming," affirmed Hermione.

"Let me check something," I said. Stepping out from beneath the cloak, I clapped my hands and touched the wall. Blue sparks shot out from the point of contact, but otherwise nothing happened. "The security I set up is still in place. There's no going through the walls and around the obstacles. Snape'll have to go straight through the protections with no short cuts."

"Can't we just wait here and stop him when he tries to leave?" asked Sloth. "I doubt he'll be able to disable your protection even with the Stone."

"If Voldemort's in there with him?" asked Harry. "Once he's got the Stone, he might be able to get his new body then and there. We have to catch up before he gets it."

Harry opened the door and a massive doglike creature with three heads and twice the size of Loki when he transformed growled at us. I ducked behind the door. The others were still concealed under Harry's cloak, but that didn't stop Fluffy from smelling them.

Well, Hagrid had told us what to do. I stepped fully into view, spread my arms wide, and began to sing. The tune was one from a lifetime ago, one I'd learned as a hymn to praise the sun god Leto. Long before I learned our prophet was a fraud. The words, I based on the story of the Elric brothers' journey. Fluffy was fast asleep before I finished the first verse.

"Keep singing," said Harry. "It must wake up as soon as the music stops."

They filed into the room proper, getting out from under the cloak while I kept the sad melody about the Elrics' ill fated attempt to bring back their mother, and what it had cost them. I was singing in my native tongue, so I doubt the others got more out of it than the fact that Fluffy wasn't killing them. They approached the trap door.

"I should go first," said Sloth, pulling open the door. "There's a long drop, and I can catch you." She then hopped down. After a full verse of my song, she called back. "It's okay to come down. There's a soft landing so you can all come at once."

I finished my last verse and jumped down with the others, landing on what felt like some sort of plant.

"What's this stuff?" asked Ron.

"Dunno," said Harry. "Some sort of plant thing. I suppose it's here to break the fall."

"We must be miles under the school," guessed Hermione.

"Devil's snare!" I exclaimed when I saw the plant's tendrils wrapping around our legs. "It isn't here to save us, it's here to kill us!"

I started breaking tendrils off in an attempt to extricate us when Sloth sighed, took us by the hand, and walked us out from the plant with no fuss. "I've been studying the structure and composition of magic plants and animals ever since that troll surprised me," she said.

"Lucky thing," said Harry. "This way."

"Can you hear something?" asked Ron in a whisper as we went. Pausing to listen, I heard it, light clinking sounds interspersed amid a bustle of tiny wings.

"Whatever it is, we'll find out soon enough," I said, pressing onward, but getting my wand at the ready. The others followed suit.

The next chamber was brightly lit. Hundreds of winged keys fluttered in the air. The heavy door on the far side of the room would prevent Sloth from just phasing us through with her powers thanks to my part of the security, so just holding hands and making a run for it was out.

"Do you think they'll attach us if we cross the room?" asked Ron.

"Probably. They don't look very vicious, but I suppose if they all swooped down at once..." mused Harry. "Well, there's no other choice. I'll run."

"Wait," I said. Then I clapped my hands and held my palms over my head. Using alchemy, I held air molecules in place, forming a solid, tunnel shaped barrier to the door.

When we reached the door and none of the keys even tried to attack, I released the continuous transmutation, and our protective barrier vanished. Still, the keys didn't attack. The others tried opening the door, Hermione even trying to charm it open with magic. Nothing worked.

"Now what?" asked Ron.

"Best guess is we need the right key," I said, gesturing up dejectedly. Trying them all would take forever, even assuming Snape hadn't taken the right key with him.

"Look," said Harry. "Broomsticks! We've got to catch the key to the door." There were indeed a pile of broomsticks in the corner, presumably for this very purpose.

"But there are hundreds of them," complained Hermione.

"We're looking for a big, old fashioned one, probably silver like the handle," said Ron after a moment examining the door.

Harry led the other two wizard children after the key while Sloth and I stayed on the ground with Loki. Our flying had improved significantly over the year, but neither of us would do more than get in the way. Catching small, erratically flying, hard to spot objects amid distractions was Harry's job on the Quidditch team, and in no time, he caught the key and opened the door with it.

The next chamber was guarded by a set of chess men carved at full human size. The floor was decorated with squares. Unlike the wizard chess sets I'd seen before, I doubted these could talk, because instead of faces,, they just had smooth, blank stone.

"Now what do we do?" asked Harry.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" replied Ron. "We've got to play our way across the room."

"How?" asked Hermione.

"I think we're going to have to be the chessmen?" said Ron. He approached a black knight on our side of the board and asked, "Do we, er, have to join you to get across?"

It nodded in reply.

"This needs thinking about," mused Ron. "I suppose we've got to take the place of five of the black chess pieces. Now, don't be offended, but none of you are that good at chess."

"We're not offended," said Harry. "Just tell us what to do."

"Right," I agreed. "You're the king."

The black king turned towards us and shook its head before returning to its position.

"I suppose it wouldn't be much of an obstacle if you could choose the one piece that never gets taken," noted Harry.

Ron had made up his mind. "Harry, Greed, I want you two as the bishops. Sloth, Hermione, you two are the castles."

"What about you?" asked Harry.

"I'm going to be a knight," he said.

The five pieces stepped off the board and we took our places, Loki sharing my square. Ron began directing our forces. The first capture was our other knight by the white queen, who delivered a brutal beating before dragging the knight aside.

Seeing how shaken Ron was, I called over to him. "Keep the others safe, but if it makes sense in the game, don't hesitate to sacrifice me or Sloth. Remember, we're not human."

Ron struggled mightily to keep Harry and Hermione safe as he looked for ways to mate the white king. He did hesitate when it came down to a sacrifice of me or Hermione, but with a grim look, he sent me to be taken. I kept Loki calm. Fighting back might invalidate the game. The white rook headbutted me hard enough to knock out a human in one hit, then kept hitting me until I went limp with blood streaming from my nose. I set upright and gave Ron a thumbs up after I was dragged to the sidelines.

"We're nearly there," said Ron to himself. "Let me think. Let me think. Yes. It's the only way. I've got to be taken."

"No!" shouted all four of us at once.

"That's chess!" retorted Ron. "You've got to make some sacrifices. I take one step forward and she'll take me. That leaves you free to checkmate the king, Harry."

"There has to be another way," said Sloth.

"Do you want to stop Snape or not?" asked Ron. "Look, if you don't hurry up, he'll already have the Stone."

None of us could argue the point. He made his move and the white queen hit him hard, and he was out instantly. When she tossed Ron by me, I looked over his injuries and called out, "He's going to be okay." I pointed my wand at his head wound and mended his injury. Ron regained consciousness in time to see the king toss his crown at Harry's feet.

"What do you reckon's next?" asked Harry as we moved on.

"We've had Sprout's," said Hermione. "That was the devil's snare. Flitwick must've put charms on the keys. McGonagall transfigured the chessmen to make them alive. That leaves Quirrell's spell and Snape's."

The next room contained an unconscious troll.

"I'm glad we didn't have to fight that one," said Harry as we passed through. "Come on, I can't breathe."

The stench was bad enough we quickly moved on to a room containing a table, a roll of paper, and seven bottles. As we stepped inside, purple fire rose up to block our way back, and a wall of black flames blocked the way forward.

"Snape's. What do we have to do?" asked Harry.

"Look," said Hermione, grabbing the paper and reading. She smiled. "Brilliant. This isn't magic. It's logic, a logic puzzle. A lot of great wizards haven't got an ounce of logic. They'd be stuck here forever."

"But so will we, won't we?" asked Harry, nervous after reading over her shoulder.

"Of course not," said Hermione. "Everything we need is on this paper. Seven bottles. Three are poison. Two are wine. One will get us safely through the black fire, and one will get us back through the purple."

"But how do we know which to drink?" asked Harry.

"Give me a minute," replied Hermione.

While she thought, I took some inspiration from the key room, where Harry had recognized the right key by its damaged wing from when it had already been caught. Examining the bottles themselves I made a concerning discovery.

"I don't think Snape's the one behind this," I said.

"What are you on about?" asked Ron.

"If this is Snape's protection, he would've known which bottle was the right one ahead of time," I said. "Whoever's in on the other side of those flames took a drink from all seven bottles."

"But three are poisoned," noted Ron.

"He must've brought beozars," I said, recalling the first day of potions. "We should've brought beozars. What's wrong with us? We learn there's a universal cure for most poisons and we don't keep them on us at all times? We're doing that from now on."

"Got it," said Hermione. "The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire, toward the Stone."

"There's only enough left for one of us," said Harry, examining the bottle. "That's hardly one swallow. Which one will get you back through the purple flames?"

She pointed.

"You four drink that," said Harry. When we started to speak, he said. "No, listen. Grab brooms from teh flying key room. They'll get you out of the trapdoor and past Fluffy. Go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore. We need him. I might be able to hold off Snape or whoever's in there for a while, but I'm probably no match for him, really."

"But Harry," said Hermione when he finished, "what if You-Know-Who's in there?"

"Well, I was lucky once, wasn't I?" Harry said, pointing to his famous scar. "I might get lucky again."

"You're not going in there alone," I said firmly, covering my entire body with the Ultimate Shield, to the astonished gasps from the others at my inhuman appearance. "It's just like what you did to Hagrid's hut," I said to Ron as Sloth also donned the Ultimate Shield, looking like a bald, grey skinned demon. "The human body has carbon who's bonds can be rearranged just like wood does. Don't try it yourself."

"I wasn't planning on it," said Ron.

"You two are fireproof?" verified Harry.

"Hopefully," I said. "Give Loki some of the purple flame potion and get him to safety with you. We're with you, Harry."

Hermione, Ron, and Loki drank their potion and disappeared through the purple flames. Harry drank his and stepped into the black. Sloth and I ran into them alongside him.

The Ultimate Shield is just a name. It worked by manipulating the bonds of carbon in the body to make flesh as hard as diamond. But get a fire hot enough, and even diamonds will burn. Thanks to his potion, Harry Potter emerged from the flames intact and unscathed. On either side of him, a small pile of ashes and charred bone dripped to the ground. 

* * *

If killing a homunculus was as easy as burning it to ash in enchanted flames, we'd have been a lot less worried about Voldemort becoming one. Sparks of blue alchemic light arced over the two piles of ashes, and a pair of skeletons materialized. A wave of light passed over them, layering in muscle and rebuilding organs. The third wave saw Sloth and I whole once again.

Our wands and robes had been burnt up in the fire, so we were dressed in the black outfits our bodies were capable of producing. Sloth in her overall dress, and me in my pants and vest, with my oroboros mark clearly visible in the center of my chest. Pretending to be human after that entrance would be a waste, so we both sported the pale skin, pointed teeth, and purple slitted eyes of our natural forms.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief when we finished regenerating. On the other side of the room, Professor Quirrell stood, smirking at us.

"I was right," I said grimly. "It wasn't Snape."

"Severus?" asked Quirrell with mocking laughter. "Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn't he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat. Next to him, who would ever suspect p-p-poor st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrell?"

"But Snape tried to kill me!" Harry exclaimed.

"No, no, no," replied Quirrell in mocking good humor. "I tried to kill you. Your friend, Miss Granger, accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at the Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I'd have got you off that broom. I'd have managed it before then if Snape hadn't been muttering a countercurse trying to save you."

While he talked, I eyed the room. The Mirror of Erised was in the center. There was no obvious sign of either Philosopher's Stone. Using alchemy on the walls, floor, or ceiling was out until I could get to the red stones in the cylindrical container in the corner powering my defenses.

"Snape was trying to save me?" asked Harry, trying to process this new reality.

"Of course," said Quirrell. "Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn't do it again. Funny really, he needn't have bothered. I couldn't do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning. He did make himself unpopular. And what a waste of time, when after all that, I'm going to kill you tonight."

Sloth rushed forward at those words, and I clapped my hands. My options for alchemy were limited, but not nonexistent. Mimicking the signature technique of Flame Alchemist, Roy Mustang, I transmuted the air around Quirrell into a highly volatile mix of oxygen and hydrogen gas. A thin fuse of invisible transmuted air ran between the bubble around Quirrell and the intense, black flames behind me. I didn't have anything like Mustang's precision and control, but the basics were enough to light Quirrell on fire.

Quirrell was engulfed in bright orange flames. Sloth skidded to a halt as Quirrell screamed out in pain. Then the trained wizard snapped his fingers and the screams turned to laughter. With the fire still surrounding him, but his flesh unburned save for a slight reddening from the initial contact, he turned toward me.

"Flame freezing charms," said Quirrell smugly as the fire burnt itself out from lack of fuel. "You'll learn all about those in your second year. Well, you won't."

Sloth resumed her rush as Quirell raised his hand. She pressed her palm to the center of Quirrell's chest and widened her eyes in surprise.

"I assume you were expecting something to happen, puppet," said Quirrell. "Pity Flamel didn't make you much more competent than actual first years."

He snapped his fingers again, and ropes suddenly bound myself, Sloth, and Harry. Sloth couldn't phase through them while they were in the process of being conjured, and with her plan of phasing her hand through his chest having been thwarted somehow, we didn't immediately try to free ourselves while we came up with a new plan of attack.

"You're all too nosy to live," said Quirrell. "Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all I knew, you'd seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone."

"You let the troll in?" asked Harry.

"Certainly. I have a special gift with trolls. You must have seen what I did to the one in the chamber back there. Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off. And not only did my troll fail to beat you to death, that three headed dog didn't even manage to bite Snape's leg off properly."

This guy did love to hear himself talk. Fortunately, it gave me time to think. He'd bound my hands separately so I couldn't clap again. Fortunately, as a side effect of the occlumency training, I'd learned to shape shift. I went with something subtle that wouldn't be noticed. A small transmutation circle appeared as a tattoo on my inner wrist. I could use it to deconstruct the ropes when I had a plan for what to do when free.

"Now, wait quietly," said Quirrell. "I need to examine this interesting mirror. This mirror is the key to finding the Stone. Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this, but he's in London. I'll be far away by the time he gets back."

With the Philosopher's Stone, I could overcome whatever resistance he was putting up to Sloth's powers and rip his body apart molecule by molecule. That seemed like a fairly strong desire. If I could get in front of the mirror, I could figure out where the Stone really was.

"I saw you and Snape in the forest," said Harry suddenly.

I took advantage of the distraction and caused a tendril to emerge from my body and snake unseen to the front of the Mirror of Erised while Quirrell strolled around the back of the mirror and kept talking.

"Yes," he said. "He was on to me by that time, trying to figure out how far I'd got. He suspected me all along. Tried to frighten me. As though he could with Lord Voldemort on my side."

The tendril I'd extended from my body grew an eye that stared into the Mirror of Erised. The mirror reflected me bursting my bonds and holding the Philosopher's Stone toward Quirrell, tearing his body apart in a swirling vortex of alchemic light. No useful clue where the Stone actually was. As Quirrell got back to the front, I withdrew the eye stalk.

"I see the Stone," said Quirrell frustrated as he gazed into the mirror. "I'm presenting it to my master, but where is it?"

At least he was no closer to the Stone than I was. The red stones in the corner were weaker amplifiers, but if whatever resistance Quirrell had was weak enough, they might be enough.

"But Snape always seemed to hate me so much," said Harry, keeping Quirrell talking.

"Oh, he does. Heavens yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father. Didn't you know? They loathed each other, but he never wanted you dead."

"But I heard you a few days ago, sobbing," pressed Harry. "I thought Snape was threatening you."

"Sometimes I find it hard to follow my master's instructions. He is a great wizard and I am weak."

"You mean he was there, in the classroom with you?" asked Harry in shock.

"He is with me wherever I go. I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil. There is only power and those too weak to seek it. Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me. He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the Stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me, decided he would have to keep a closer watch on me."

I had no idea how strong Quirrell was physically. The troll had looked like it suffered a physical assault rather than a hex. I was stronger than a normal human, but how much magic could be used to enhance your strength was an open question. A straight fight should be a last resort.

"I don't understand," said Quirrell to himself. "Is the Stone inside the mirror? Should I break it? What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, master."

I froze when a voice answered him. "Use the boy. Use the boy."

"Yes, Potter, come here," said Quirrell, clapping his hands and making Harry's ropes disappear. Sloth and I remained bound. If Quirrell tried to hurt Harry, I'd have to resort to physical violence and hope for the best.

"Come here. Look in the mirror and tell me what you see."

Harry looked terrified as he approached the mirror. I considered a transmutation I'd only heard about. Edward Elric had described an alchemist he'd met in Youswell that subsequently went on to have her body possessed by Dante. It seemed like my best bet if I couldn't get the Stone.

"Well?" demanded Quirrell. "What do you see?"

"I see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore," said Harry, haltingly. "I-I've won the house cup for Gryffindor."

"Get out of the way," snapped Quirrell.

Then that voice declared, "He lies. He lies."

That voice wasn't Quirrell's, but it was definitely coming from his direction. I tensed, preparing ot act.

"Potter, come back here," ordered Quirrell. "Tell me the truth. What did you just see?"

"Let me speak to him face to face," ordered the voice as Harry stood rigid, paralyzed with fright.

"Master, you are not strong enough," argued Quirrell.

"I have strength enough for this." Quirrell unwrapped his turban, revealing a familiar face on the back of his head. The creature in the forest had been Quirrell, walking with this face forward. Whatever anatomical reconfigurations had made this possible was likely making his body composition strange enough to disrupt direct alchemy on it, and that explained Sloth not being able to phase through him.

"Harry Potter," said Lord Voldemort from the back of Quirrell's head, "see what I've become? Mere shadow and vapor. I have form only when I can share another's body, but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds. Unicorn blood has strengthened me these past weeks. Faithful Quirrell was drinking it for me in the forest. And once I have t he Elixer of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own. Now, why don't you give me those Stones in your pockets?"

That was our cue. Sloth phased through her ropes and launched herself at Quirrell. She still couldn't phase through him, but she punched him hard enough in Voldemort's face to make him stumble to one knee before Quirrell could react.

In the same instant, I activated the transmutation circle on my wrist, deconstructing my ropes and ran for the bin of red stones.

Harry staggered back away from Quirrell, trying to escape, but unsure where to go in the enclosed space.

A bolt of green light flew from Quirrell's hand and Sloth crumpled to the ground. Blue light coming off her body told me she was regenerating from whatever Quirrell just did to her. Quirrell grabbed at Harry and caught hold of his wrist. Quirrell snatched his hand away from Harry. His hand was burnt worse than when I'd hit him with flame alchemy.

"Master, I cannot hold him. My hands, my hands," screamed Quirrell.

"Then kill him, fool, and be done," declared Voldemort.

I stopped running for the red stones, clapped my hands, and spun on my heel to face Quirrell. Opening my hands a few inches appart, an orb of blue light appeared between them, as transmuted air was compressed to the point of liquefying. Quirrell raised a hand to do to Harry what he'd done to Sloth, and I opened a hole in the orb of transmuted air that was containing the rest. With the force of a tornado, the blast of pressurized air hit Quirrell, lifting the wizard off his feet and slamming him into the far wall hard enough for the stone to crack.

Red light emerged from teh crack as the alchemy I'd used to protect this corridor repaired the damaged wall. No similar force acted to restore Quirrell's broken body.

"Are you okay?" asked Sloth as she finished regenerating and stood up.

Before either of us could respond, a dark smoke with a face rose off Quirrell's body and launched itself at me. The moment it made contact, I was under a psychic assault. It hit with a mental force ten times as strong as anything Dumbledore had employed in our lessons, and came at me through every angle at once. As I blocked Lord Voldemort's spirit from suppressing my consciousness and supplanting control over my body, I could feel him probing for information, some clue as to how I might be manipulated in the future. I managed to keep him from managing that as well. I pushed memories of intense pain in the way of Voldemort's probing mind. Automail being attached. Being dissected by the Nazis. Existing as a pile of raw nerves and misshapen organs on my laboratory floor. He pulled away.

Voldemort's spirit, determined to posses a homunculus today, launched itself at Sloth. Harry ran over to Sloth and pressed his hands to her face as she collapsed to the ground. Sloth's skin blistered and boiled, regenerating just as fast, while Harry screamed, "Get out of her!"

It worked. Voldemort's spirit was forced out of Sloth, and fled Harry's touch through the wall of black flames. Harry himself passed out from the effort a moment later.

"Are you okay?" I asked Sloth.

Touching Harry's hand to her forearm tentatively and verifying she wasn't burned, Sloth nodded. "He didn't get through the occlumency."

I quickly rummaged through Harry's pockets and retrieved the two Philosopher's Stones. Harry himself was still breathing, but couldn't be roused. I pocketed the Stones and resumed my human appearance. Sloth took the red stones from the container in the corner and ate them to replenish her regeneration powers before taking on her brown haired, blue eyed, human appearance.

"Let's get him to Madam Pomfrey," I said, lifting Harry's unconscious body by the shoulders. Sloth took his legs and phased us through the back wall. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Greed is an analytical fighter who very rarely wins his first fight against a given opponent. Quirrell's abilities and peculiar body plan managed to catch our heroes off guard, and if he'd pressed his advantage instead of giving a villain monologue, he'd have won outright. The last thing you should ever do is give an alchemist time to think.


	9. Chapter 12: The Elixir of Life

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 12) The Elixir of Life  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Dumbledore arrived in the Hogwarts infirmary shortly after Sloth and I had explained what happened to Harry and he'd been put in bed for observation.

"Is anyone else hurt?" asked Dumbledore as he looked Harry up and down.

"Ron took a nasty blow to the head from the chess set, but he's already been patched up," I told him.

"Harry just collapsed after driving Voldemort's spirit out of my body," said Sloth with concern. "Madam Pomfrey can't wake him up and alchemy's useless if we don't know what's wrong with him. What happened to Harry?"

"I can't be certain," Dumbledore admitted, "but the two of you have heard the story of how Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby?"

We nodded.

"I believe that whatever happened that night forged a connection between the two of them. While Voldemort assaulted both of your minds, your occlumency training helped you weather the blow. I believe when Harry touched Voldemort's current host, he was open to a similar form of attack."

"You knew Voldemort was here," I accused Dumbledore. "Why didn't you teach him to protect his mind with occlumency?"

"Because I didn't believe you would drag him into danger," replied Dumbledore. "That is a bit unfair, yes? We both believed we could protect Harry. I didn't anticipate all of you needing to rush to protect the Stones. I intended to deal with it myself when he made his move. We both underestimated the danger."

"What was your plan?" I asked after a long moment, with no further accusation in my voice. "The security you set up for the Stones was laughable. Enchanted to fly around or no, you don't leave the key to a lock just outside the door. And then there were the potions with the right one written down right next to them."

A twinkle returned to the old man's eye as he said, "Yes, the corridor was so simple a handful of first years could navigate it. Tell me, did Voldemort read the note to figure out the potions?"

"No," I said. "He just drank them all."

"The tests were easy for you because you weren't who we were trying to stop," explained Dumbledore. "Lord Voldemort was a powerful wizard, but at least as of the time of his disappearance, he was still only human. He had strengths and weaknesses just like we all do. Far too many people, with this 'You-Know-Who' nonsense have forgotten he was a man, not some embodiment of fundamental evil."

"You mean he was bad enough at herbology that he wouldn't recognize Devil's Snare?" asked Sloth incredulously.

"I expect he's spent all year confronted with his own shortcomings as he worked out how to reach the mirror. My hope was that he would go through all that, then be stopped by the mirror until I could arrive and confront him."

"How did Harry get the Stones?" I asked.

"Ah, I'm quite proud of that one," said Dumbledore beaming. "I enchanted the mirror such that only one who wanted to find the Stones, but not use them would be able to get them. Otherwise, they'd just see themselves making gold or drinking the Elixer of Life."

"The Elixir!" I realized with a start. "Do you think that would help Harry? It's supposed to cure any ailment in addition to extending the drinker's lifespan indefinitely with regular use, right?"

"Perhaps," mused Dumbledore. "In any event, I can't see how it would do him any harm. It would be fitting, I think, for that to be the Stone's last use."

"Last use?" I asked.

"As I said, we have underestimated our enemy. If we are to close this means of resurrection to him, the Philosopher's Stones must be destroyed."

"I don't see how that's your call to make, Dumbledore. For either Stone," I said, putting a hand reflexively over my pocket.

"I have no intention of forcing the matter," said Dumbledore pleasantly. "I merely intend to speak with the Flamels about my concerns."

"Destroying the Stone would be a waste," I said firmly. "It would make the price paid to create it meaningless."

Dumbledore sighed. "And I am to believe it was a high price indeed that both you and Master Flamel have paid."

"Thousands of human lives must be sacrificed to forge a Stone," I said.

"Which would explain where the Elixir gets the life to grant its drinker," said Dumbledore sadly. "I had long suspected there was a darker cost to the Philosopher's Stone's gifts than I knew. It seems to be a law of the universe that seeking eternal life comes with such costs."

Sloth took my hand and squeezed it as I went on, my vision starting to blur from tears. "My Stone was made from people being targeted at ground zero of a nuclear bombing. Your world has nuclear weapons, right? Well, I made the call that more lives would be saved letting the bomb drop and hopefully ending the war than by stopping it and letting the fighting continue. I made this Philosopher's Stone from their lives so that the entire business would be less of a waste."

"I can only hope my old friend had similar reasons," said Dumbledore, putting his hand on my shoulder. "It must be very heavy."

"One more question," said Sloth as Dumbledore turned to leave. "What is it about Harry that let him drive out Voldemort's spirit? Why does his touch burn Voldemort's hosts?"

"That is two questions," corrected the school headmaster. "Harry's mother gave up her life to protect him from Voldemort. Old, deep magic indeed. His mother's love for him still lingers long after she's gone. I believe that is what saved him on the day Voldemort's power broke, and it continues to protect him even now."

"I should brew the Elixir," I said after Dumbledore had gone.

"I'll stay with Harry, in case he wakes up," said Sloth.

* * *

The Quidditch field was in use for the Ravenclaw versus Gryffindor game. Without their star seeker, Gryffindor didn't stand a chance. It didn't seem fair winning this way. Unable to get to my private lab, I headed down to the potions classroom in the dungeons to brew the Elixir of Life for Harry.

I found Snape there grading papers. He really wasn't a fan of Quidditch.

"Mister Oren, I'm not giving out exam grades early. You'll have to wait like everyone else."

"I'm not here for that, Professor Snape. I just wanted to sue the work space to brew something to help Harry. You have heard what happened?"

"Miss Granger and Mister Weasley have been spreading the story through half the school since before it was even over," commented Snape with annoyance. "What are you planning to brew?"

I produced the Philosopher's Stone from my pocket and said, "The Elixir of Life."

"Should I ask why the Headmaster hasn't confiscated that from you already, Oren?"

"He needs to talk to the Flamels about what to do with the Stone after this. He's letting me try this to see if it'll revive Harry from his coma."

"Just be sure you pay attention to the brewing directions. The last thing Potter needs right now is a misbrewed elixir from an overconfident first year."

"Would you supervise, Professor?" I asked. "Make sure I don't mess it up?"

"I haven't the time to hold your hand through everything," he snapped. "Brew your elixir and I'll look it over when it's done so you don't poison the boy."

As I worked, I said, "I'm sorry we suspected you of being the one trying to steal the Stone. And I'm sorry we suspected you of trying to murder Harry." Snape snorted and didn't look up from his papers. "Quirrell said you've been saving Harry's life all year. We misjudged you. We should have listened to Hagrid when he stuck up for you."

After that there was only the sound of the scratching of Snape's quill and the simmering of my cauldron. When the liquid had taken on the same blood red color as the Stone itself, I brought by cauldron up to Professor Snape to examine.

"This is the first opportunity I've had to examine the Elixir of Life in person," admitted Snape. "The color and consistency are as they should be. I sincerely hope you appreciate the privileged you've been given, being allowed to make this potion. Now, go give it to Potter." 

* * *

On the way back to the infirmary, I found Ron and Hermione. They had Loki with them, who bounded over to me excitedly.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Hermione, indicating the bottle I was carrying.

"It's for Harry," I said. "It's supposed to be able to cure anything, so I'm hoping it'll bring him around."

"Let's go," insisted Ron.

As we walked, they explained that after they'd left the potion room, they'd encountered Dumbledore in the corridor. He'd rushed down when he heard Harry was still down there. Ron had kept ahold of Harry's invisibility cloak, which proved necessary when Madam Pomfrey declared that there were too many of us to visit Harry together.

The others snuck in and I gave Harry the Elixir of Life. Immediately, he stirred and began to come around.

"The Stones! Voldemort!" said Harry when he came to.

"It's okay," I said. "The Stones are both safe and Voldemort fled after you drove him out of Sloth.

Harry relaxed then looked at his surroundings. "How long have I been here?"

"All day," said Ron. "You missed the Quidditch match with Ravenclaw. We got slammed without you."

"We were all worried about you," said Hermione.

"I wanted to thank you," said Sloth. "You got hurt trying to save me."

"It sounds like it all turned out okay," said Harry dismissively.

"Get some rest, mate," said Ron. "You want to get well enough that Madam Pomfrey'll let you go to the end of year feast. Slytherin won, of course, but the food'll be good." 

* * *

A few days later, Dumbledore approached Sloth and I while we were assigning Ron his alchemy homework for over the summer. We'd be starting elemental transmutation next year if he'd fully mastered manipulating chemical composition by then.

"I've returned form speaking with the Flamels," he said. "They ahve agreed that with the threat of Voldemort returning, the Philosopher's Stone must be destroyed."

"What?" asked Ron. "Flamel's just going to die?"

"The Flamels have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die. To one as young as you, I'm sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenell, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

"You know, the Stone is really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want. The two things most human beings would choose above all. The trouble is, humans do have a knack for choosing precisely those things that are worst for them."

"I think I might have a way to put the Stone permanently out of Voldemort's reach without making the forging itself a waste," I said. "It'll still mean no more Elixir of Life."

Dumbledore nodded. I took both Stones out of my pocket and handed Flamel's to Sloth. Together, we bit into our Philosopher's Stones and swallowed them.

"Well, I suppose that would qualify as destroyed," laughed Dumbledore, who was still chuckling as he left.

"He's mental," said Ron when Dumbledore had gone. "I didn't really just see you destroy two Philosopher's Stones, did I?"

"The Philosopher's Stone is a crutch for weak alchemists," I said. "It lets people perform miracles without putting in the work to really appreciate what they're doing. I don't agree with Dumbledore's value judgement. Infinite wealth and infinite life seem like fine things to me. Maybe they aren't everything, but they're not exactly mutually exclusive with the other good things in life. Do your homework over the summer, and next year I'll teach you to transmute the elements and make gold. Stick with it after that, and I'll teach you how to make yourself immortal. No Philosopher's Stone required."

"But still," said Ron. "I thought you needed it to get back to your world."

"The Gate we traveled to get to this world can be navigated without a Philosopher's Stone," said Sloth, "but time doesn't flow the same way between worlds. We theorized that the Stone could be used to control the time difference, but we haven't confirmed it. We hoped to use the Stone to let us return to our world shortly after we left, instead of maybe after everyone we ever knew is long dead."

"But using the Stone like that was never a sure thing," I said. "Being at this school has pushed me to try new things with alchemy, and learning what we can about this world's magic might let us find a more certain way to get back at a reasonable time." 

* * *

Harry had been released form observation in the infirmary so he could attend the end of year feast in the Great Hall. The Hall was decorated in Slytherin colors and banners to celebrate their victory in the House Cup. Dumbledore rose for a speach.

"Another year gone, and I must trouble you with an old man's wheezing waffle before we sink our teeth into this delicious feast. What a year it has been! Hopefully your heads are all a little fuller than they were. You have the whole summer to start to get them nice and empty before next year starts."

Following that, Dumbledore read off the current tally of House points. As shown by the decorations, Slytherin had won.

"Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin," congratulated Dumbledore, "however recent events must be taken into account. Ahem. I have a few last minute points to dish out. Let me see, yes.

"Firstly, to Mr. Ronald Weasley, for the best game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years, I award Gryffindor fifty points.

"Second, to Miss Hermione Granger, for use of cool logic in the face of fire, I award Gryffindor house fifty points.

"Third, to Miss Nina Tucker, for an unfailing drive to protect others at great cost to herself, I aware Hufflepuff house fifty points.

"Fourth, to Mr. Marcus Oren, for an unflinching willingness to seek the truth and act when the time is right, I award Ravenclaw house fifty points.

"Fifthly, to Mr. Harry Potter, for pure nerve and outstanding courage, I award Gryffindor house sixty points.

"There are all kinds of courage. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I therefor award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom."

And just like that, Slytherin had gone from the top to the bottom. The Gryffindors were all cheering, and I was getting slaps on the back from my fellow Ravenclaws, we'd still been shunning me up to that point.

"Which means, we need a little change of decoration," said Dumbledore, who clapped his hands and magically changed the banners and colors from Slytherin to Gryffindor.

None of the Slytherins looked happy. Snape tried to be magnanimous and shake McGonagall's hand, but it was plain to everyone he was forcing it. Was there really any need for all the theatrics? Dumbledore could've awarded those points before the feast so the Slytherins wouldn't come in expecting victory only to see it snatched away suddenly and publicly. Sure, Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were jerks, but that didn't mean a quarter of the school was evil. 

* * *

Our marks came in the next day. I ranked second in the first years, just below Hermione. In most subjects, we were dead even, with the maximum points available, but my flying was bad enough that I'd just barely passed that course. Sloth did exceptionally well for this being her first real experience with this sort of education.

Our things were packed and transported back to the Hogwarts Express through the same mysterious method they'd gotten off the train by. An investigation to perhaps pursue next year. Meanwhile, we were loaded back on to the boats and carried across the lake to the waiting train. We'd all been given letters warning us not to use magic over the summer.

At the platform, we bid goodbye to our new friends. Ron promised to send an owl once he'd talked his parents into letting us come for a stay with his family in the summer. Sloth and I left the platform together.

"So, what do we do while we wait for Ron's owl?" asked Sloth.

"I figure we make a bunch of gold and open an account at Gringotts, visit a muggle library or two, and most importantly, find a place to get those swimming lessons we keep getting distracted from."

* * *

Author's comments:  
This chapter represents the first of many times Dumbledore will be called out in the course of this story. It's as mild as it is because Sloth and Greed are still new to this world and haven't learned much about just how much of the current situation is Dumbledore's fault. That will escalate over time. Meanwhile, I hope you've enjoyed this trip through book one.


	10. Chapter 14: The First Summer Vacation

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 14) The First Summer Vacation  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

For the next week, we adopted a routine. Each morning, we'd take a wheelbarrow of transmuted gold to Gringotts, have it changed for Galleons, and put the money in our vault. Then I'd visit the library in the afternoon while Sloth worked on the summer homework I'd finished in the week before our exam results came in. Come evening, we'd take our swimming lessons together, then retreat to our room.

When I returned from the library after a full week of that routine, Sloth was holding up a pair of letters that had been delivered while I was out.

"The owl Ron sent was in pretty bad shape," said Sloth, handing me the letters. A quick glance showed they were mostly updates from Ron and Hermione. Hermione was on a trip with her parents and wouldn't be able to visit Ron's house. Ron was expecting us soon.

"I sent the letters we wrote Harry, Ron, and Hermione with Ron's owl," Sloth continued. "I hope they make it. I also took the liberty of telling Ron we'd be there tomorrow."

"That works for me," I said. "These directions look straightforward enough."

So, the following morning, Sloth and I checked out of the hotel, adopted the appearance of twelve year olds, and made our way to the Burrow. A cab took us close, so we didn't have to lug our trunks the whole way. With a Philosopher's Stone fueling both of us, the trunks weren't really heavy, but pretending they were got boring very quickly. Loki, meanwhile, was just happy to get out of the city and breathe the fresh air.

The Burrow itself was a crooked, multistory house with a large, ill maintained garden. A handful of chickens were wandering the yard, but they scattered at the sound of a large explosion from an upper level window. Thick, black smoke poured out of the open window, and one of the twins stuck his head out, his freckled face covered in soot.

Sloth and I were about to run up and render assistance when he waved at us in a friendly manner and ducked back inside. A moment later, Fred, George, Ron, and Percy came out the front door, accompanied by a younger girl and a short woman.

"Give you a hand with your trunks?" offered a twin, as the boys took our luggage and carried it up toward the house.

"You must be the exchange students Ron's been telling us so much about," said the woman. "I want you to feel right at home here. You must be hungry after your trip."

"We don't want to impose," I started before being shushed.

"Nonsense. It's as easy to feed a dozen as it is to cook for one. Now, come along inside."

"My name is Generva," said the younger sister. "Everyone calls me Ginny. What's your name?"

"Greed," I said as we were ushered into the Weasleys' kitchen.

"I'm Sloth," said Sloth as she looked around the cluttered kitchen.

"Is Ron really friends with Harry Potter?" asked Ginny. "He says so, but Harry hasn't sent one owl."

"Of course I'm friends with Harry," said Ron entering the cramped room with the other boys. "So are they. Tell her."

"You want us to tell her about fighting the troll together?" I asked Ron.

"Harry tried to save my life," said Sloth, recalling the scene with a smile.

"I knew he was a hero," said Ginny, dreamily.

"I'm the one that knocked out that troll," said Ron with annoyance.

While we talked, Mrs. Weasley had been demonstrating precisely what she meant, as the sausages she was frying duplicated themselves in the pan with a tap of her wand.

"Wait a minute," I said, suddenly. "I thought you couldn't conjure food. It was in our transfiguration tests."

"Of course you can't," said Mrs. Weasley. "I'm just multiplying."

"They're both muggleborns," said Ron, "so this is all still pretty new to them."

"We're both quick studies," said Sloth, "but there's a lot to take in."

"I'm sure dad'll have all sorts of questions for you when he gets home," said Ginny.

"If you need a rescue from that, let us know," offered one of the twins.

Mrs. Weasley piled sausages on plates for me and Sloth, then set the pan down for Loki. Not for the first time, I was grateful for the chimera's robust digestive system as I tasted the first of the greasy sausages. Multiplication magic would explain the seeming wastefulness of the Hogwarts feasts.

"You can stay in my room while you're here," said Ginny to Sloth. "We're close to the top of the stairs."

"And you're with me," said Ron. "We've already got your trunks up."

"After you eat, did you want to come out and play some Quidditch with us?" asked one of the twins.

"You can borrow our brooms and take turns," offered the other.

"My flying's pretty embarrassing," I warned them, "but Sloth and I have got our own brooms. I'll play."

"Me too," said Sloth.

"What about you, Percy?" asked Ron. "You in?"

"I'm busy," he replied. "You go along."

"Can I come?" asked Ginny.

"You're too young," said one of the twins firmly.

"You haven't even had your first flying lessons yet," said the other.

"I'll bet I can fly circles around you," shot Ginny.

"Don't we need more people anyway?" asked Sloth. "Even with Ginny, we won't have enough for even one full team."

"Besides, lessons or no, she can't fly much worse than the two of us," I added. "Both of us barely passed the class."

"You see," said Ginny, adapting to having an ally in what looked to have been a long standing argument with speed and grace.

"You don't have a broom," said Ron.

"You already offered to take turns for us," said Sloth. "Besides, if Percy isn't coming, maybe he'll let her borrow his."

"Percy?" asked Ginny with practiced sweetness.

"Go ahead," said Percy distractedly. "I'm heading up to my room."

Their objections exhausted, Ginny was included in the game. We all went to gather our broomsticks. My trunk had been moved to the top floor, just below the attic. Ron led me up.

"Don't mind that," said Ron when a loud clattering noise sounded from above. "The ghoul in the attic likes to drop pipes if it thinks things are getting too quiet."

"Is it dangerous?" I asked.

"If it was, we'd have got it out of the attic," said Ron. "Why'd you fight so hard to let Ginny play?"

"You think I want to be the worst flier out there?" I asked, retrieving my broom.

"What model is that?" asked Ron. Then, "Are those alchemy marks?"

"Normal brooms don't work for us," I said, slinging it over my shoulder. "We've been scrambling on the school brooms all year. This'll be our first chance to try out these."

* * *

Ginny asked about Harry's Quidditch games while we made our way to the tree lined field where the Weasleys practiced. Fred and George asked us about our brooms when they could get a word in edgewise. Sloth just said they were custom made and resumed answering Ginny's never ending supply of questions about Harry to avoid getting into more detail.

The balls the Weasleys had brought weren't enchanted, so there wouldn't be any questions if they were lost and turned up in the nearby muggle village. I instructed Loki to catch any dropped balls, then the six of us mounted our brooms and kicked off the ground.

The array being engraved into the wood of my broomstick, and not needing to adjust the alchemy on the fly with a red stone, made an enormous difference. Sloth and I were first off the ground, my broom trailing blue light from its active array and Sloth's trailing red. It was almost effortless to bring myself around and hover.

"Way better than the school brooms," said Sloth, flying next to me.

"Those have some great takeoff time," said one of the twins. "Mind if we give them a try after we play a few rounds?"

"Sorry," I said, sincerely. "They've got some extra security in case someone tries to steal them. They only work for us."

The half-truth inspired awe rather than suspicion, and we got started with the game. I'd added every feature from every racing broom I'd read about last year in Hogwarts, and a few speed and maneuverability upgrades of my own, to the brooms Sloth and I rode. They were plainly better equipment than the older brooms the Weasley siblings rode. That didn't change the fact that the twins were on their house team for a reason, and Ron had plainly gotten more out of the flying lessons than we had. Ginny was wobbly, but didn't crash, which was better than half our class' first time on a broom.

The result was that while Sloth and I could out-speed and out-corner them, we both had trouble juggling the quaffle and bludgers while we were doing it and kept losing track of people since we weren't used to dealing with three dimensions. On the plus side, by the end of the game, I'd finally worked out how to tell Fred and George apart.

* * *

Ron showed me to his room that evening. Loki sniffed at Scabbers sleeping on a window sill before settling down for the night.

"How's your homework coming along?" I asked Ron when we were alone. "Sloth's almost done with hers."

"I'll get it done," said Ron with a guilty glance at his schoolbooks, which were stacked on a corner.

"I hope so," I said. "I'm looking forward to teaching elemental transmutation. Speaking of which, Harry's birthday is over the summer, isn't it?"

"Yeah, in a few weeks," said Ron. "I'll try and ask Percy to borrow Hermes to send his card. Did you want to send something?"

"Just a card," I said after a moment's thought. "The gift will have to wait until we're on the Hogwarts Express."

"What're you getting him?" asked Ron.

"Voldemort attacked Harry last year," I said. "He'll probably do it again at some point. I'm going to make Harry a weapon to defend himself with."

"What sort of weapon?"

"Harry's already got the power to drive Voldemort out of a host body. The trouble is stopping his spirit form. There's an advanced technique in alchemy that can be used to bind a person's soul to metal. If that metal is, for example, a suit of armor, the soul can animate it. On the other hand, if it's just a metal coin, all the bound soul can do is see, hear, and talk."

"Harry doesn't know how to do alchemy," noted Ron.

"The coin I'm designing will do it all for him. I'm including a self-contained power source for the soul attachment, so all Harry has to do is throw it at Voldemort's spirit body an the coin'll do the rest."

"Is it dangerous? What happens if one of us touches it on accident?"

"Then it'll rip your soul out of your body, and then once it's contained in the coin, another transmutation will strip away all knowledge, memories, and personality from the bound soul, erasing who you are as thoroughly as I know how to do. That's why I wanted to explain about it in person, instead of sending it through the mail."

"Have I mentioned how scary you are sometimes?" asked Ron.

* * *

The Weasley patriarch, Arthur, had worked late at the Ministry of Magic that first night, so I only saw him at breakfast the next day. He was a thin, balding man who seemed eager to meet Sloth and I.

"I understand you're both muggleborns from outside Britain. What are things like where you're from?" asked Mr. Weasley.

"It's called Amestris," I said. "I'm from a small desert town on the outskirts. Sloth's from the capitol."

"When we left," said Sloth, "the country was transitioning from a military dictatorship to a civil democracy."

"I hope that goes well," said Mr. Weasley. "Tell me, do either of you know anything about light bulbs?"

We explained the design and function of electric lights, which led to questions about electricity in general, which in turn led to questions about infrastructure. Arthur Weasley wore an excited look on his face as Sloth and I went over the answers to some very basic scientific and social questions. I got the sense he'd been holding those sorts of questions in a long time.

Over the course of the conversation, I learned Mr. Weasley's job was in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office in the Ministry of Magic's Magical Law Enforcement department. He had a fascination with how people did things without magic, a fascination his wife disapproved of. It turned out most of his job was protecting muggles from enchanted objects that ended up in their hands.

"How do you justify leaving the muggles helpless and ignorant? Wouldn't your job be easier of they knew to contact your office if their tea set started attacking them instead of assuming they'd gone crazy?" I asked Mr. Weasley.

"Our kind did try that," said Mr. Weasley, "living openly among the muggles. The International Statute of Secrecy, hiding our entire world from the muggles, wasn't something we did lightly. The statute protects both sides. Wizards are safe from muggles attacking us out of jealousy or trying to exploit us, and muggles are protected from wizards who might otherwise use their powers to lord over them."

"Except wizards still do muggle baiting," I replied. "Cursed muggle artifacts keep turning up. That doesn't seem so protected to me."

"No, it doesn't," agreed Arthur Weasley with a sigh. "By maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, we have a responsibility to protect the muggles from our own kind. In fact, I'm sponsoring a new Muggle Protection act this year. We're also stepping up raids of known muggle baiters and persons of interest."

"That's enough politics," declared Fred. "Save the speeches for the Ministry that needs to hear them."

"Really, if you get him going about muggle rights this early, he'll be ranting till dinner," said George.

"Fair enough," said Mr. Weasley with a chuckle. Then he leaned across the table conspiratorially, shooting a glance over to the other room where Mrs. Weasley was helping Ginny write a letter to Harry. "There's a project I've been working on in the garage. I've been fixing up an old muggle car. Would either of you like to take a look at it? See if I've got everything right?"

"Go ahead," said George. "The rest of us have chores anyway, and it'll make dad happy."

"We'd love to see what you've done," said Sloth.

* * *

In the garage, Arthur Weasley proudly showed off his car. It was sleeker and lower to the ground than I was used to. I didn't much care for the style, but as Mr. Weasley talked about the work he'd put into it, taking it apart and putting it back together again, I had to admire his mechanical aptitude and his resolve. The way he talked about the machine reminded me of Winry Rockbell gushing over automail.

My first clue that something was odd about the car came when I opened the door to look at the controls.

"It's bigger on the inside," I said dumbstruck.

"Oh, you noticed," said Arthur Weasley a bit sheepishly.

"It's pretty obvious," said Sloth. "How could we not notice the seats are over twice as long as the car is wide? Didn't you just get through telling us enchanting muggle artifacts was illegal?"

"Well, you see, there's a loophole in the law. As long as the wizard never intended to use it in an obviously magical manner in public... Please, don't say anything to Molly about this."

"There's a spell to distort space like this?" I said, far more concerned with the how than the why. "So far, I haven't seen anything that didn't at least operate on matter and energy."

"Ah," said Arthur, happy to change the subject, "undetectable extension charms. NEWT level, so it isn't surprising you haven't run into them in class yet."

Even with the Philosopher's Stone, I had no idea where to even begin duplicating this effect. In fact, unless there turned out to be some muggle science or magical theory I could put together, it looked like this was going to be actually impossible to do with alchemy. Powerful and skilled as I was, I saw no way to duplicate something a wizard hobbyist threw together in his spare time. It was both frustrating and humbling.

* * *

Sloth and I stayed with the Weasleys for about a week. We played regular games of Quidditch that did more for my broomstick flying skills than all of last year's lessons combined. We didn't see much of Percy, who'd spent most of his time sequestered in his room. Between Ginny's endless questions about Harry and Arthur's about how muggle items and institutions worked, there was never a lack of conversation.

We still hadn't heard anything from Harry by the time Sloth and I left, and Ron promised to keep trying to reach him and let us know. My time spent at the Burrow was enjoyable and fulfilling. They were good people who seemed happy to have us. But by the end of our time there, the friendly acceptance started to wear on me, given that Ron was the only one who knew that not only were we not human, but we also weren't magical either.

Ron, for his part, assured us he'd be through chemical reconfiguration by the start of school, and would be ready to learn elemental transmutation. His family could certainly use the money, and making gold wasn't illegal here.

Once we were on our own again, I took Sloth out shopping in Diagon Alley. There, we bought four good invisibility cloaks and had two of them gift wrapped. Harry's cloak had been really useful last year, and making sure everyone had their own would mean we wouldn't have to keep borrowing Harry's.

Now that I knew it was a thing I could ask for thanks to Mr. Weasley, I got Sloth and I satchels with undetectable extension charms cast on them. When the time came to leave this world, we'd be able to carry all our schoolbooks and who knew what else of value we'd find, back in a couple of shoulder bags instead of trying to figure out how to lug a trunk through the Gate.

We also stopped off in a muggle shop and picked out a dozen pair of high quality wool socks. We were doing our best to fulfill the spirit of Ron's vision from the Mirror of Erised. Even if Dumbledore was lying about what he saw, it only seemed polite to grant such a small request.

"What do we do for Harry's Christmas shopping?" asked Sloth as I shoved the wrapped bundle of socks into my bag.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "The cloaks made the other two easy."

"We do have some time," said Sloth. "I'm sure he'll like his birthday gift in the meantime. Did you finish it?"

"All the design work's done," I replied. "I just didn't think it wise to start drawing blood seals in the Burrow."

"Good point. You are making some for us in case we have to fight Voldemort again, right?"

"Of course. And I've been thinking. With his memories, thoughts, and personality stripped out, we could attach the blank soul to your body. I can even add a third function to the array to automatically perform the soul attachment when you press the coin to your oroboros mark."

"Gave up on making a soul from scratch?" asked Sloth with a smirk.

"Alchemy isn't an all powerful science," I replied sincerely. "There are some things it just can't do. But even if it is possible, this is a solution that will work right now."

"I'm not complaining," said Sloth. "Voldemort's exactly the sort of person who deserves to have his soul rendered down to raw materials. I still can't get over that this world has actual dark lords. I thought those were only real in children's books."

"We're traveling an infinite multiverse," I reminded her. "We're bound to run into some strange things."

"Do you think I'll be able to do magic with his soul?" asked Sloth.

"I wish I knew. All the books are really vague about what makes the difference between witches and muggles. It's somehow inborn, and if I can figure out how, we'll see about getting that spark for ourselves."

* * *

Sloth and I kept in touch with Ron and Hermione through letters, but Harry wasn't writing back no matter how many we sent. Eventually, Ron sent word that he thought Harry was in trouble. A spell had gone off at Harry's house, and the Ministry had sent out a warning letter. This combined with the lack of communication, and Ron was preparing to stage a rescue.

I had no idea how long it had taken Ron's elderly owl to deliver us word, but I quickly dashed off a note saying, "We're in. What do you need?" and sent the owl off.

If Voldemort had found Harry, it might already be too late. I made sure the arrays on my wand and shoes were up to date and Sloth got us a car so we could respond quickly once Ron gave us the details. Loki sensed nervousness as we waited to hear back, and he shoved his head into our hands whenever we looked the most like we needed a dog.

"There he is!" said Sloth staring out the window. She pointed her wand and pulled the letter out of the owl's claw with a faintly glowing crimson aura of transmuted air. She caught thee letter and flipped it open in one motion. On her toes, ready to run out the door, she quickly read the letter.

"It's not from Ron. It looks like our Hogwarts letters."

"Why do wizards have to use owls?" I snapped. "If we'd been able to coordinate this by phone, we'd know already."

By mid afternoon, Ron's owl actually arrived, bearing the news that Harry was safe with the Weasleys and that we should meet up with them and Hermione when we visited Diagon Alley to get our school supplies. Both Sloth and I breathed a sigh of relief, then fed and rested the overworked owl before sending our reply.

* * *

On the appointed day, Sloth and I hauled another wheelbarrow of transmuted gold each to Gringotts early in the morning. With the resulting galleons added to the ever growing pile of coins in our vault, and more than enough to handle our school shopping in our bags, the two of us left the bank and took the twelve year old forms we'd be wearing this year. Unsure where precisely to meet the others, Sloth and I waited on the high steps of Gringotts scanning the crowd.

Eventually, I caught sight of Hermione. She was with an adult couple in muggle dress, presumably her parents. They looked very out of their element.

"Hermione!" I called out waving.

"Greed! Sloth!" she called back and pulled her parents along behind her. "Oh, it's wonderful to see you two again."

Loki let out a "whuff" of greeting, causing the older Grangers to jump as though they'd never seen a dog before.

"I'm sorry, you three," Hermione corrected herself as she knelt down to pet Loki.

"Will you be alright out here?" asked Hermione's mother, glancing around nervously.

"I'll be fine. I still have to see Ron and Harry," she replied.

"How have you been?" asked Sloth.

"I spent the summer traveling with my parents," said Hermione.

"Look, Hagrid," I said, noticing the gigantic groundskeeper standing had and shoulders above the rest of the crowded street. "And I think he's got Harry with him."

We waved and called out, the two of them quickly noticing us and heading our way. The four of us ran down the steps to meet them halfway. Harry looked to be in bad shape. His glasses were broken, and being held on his face with one hand. Whatever had broken them apparently also did a number on his nose, which was bruised. He was covered in soot, though Hagrid had made some attempt to brush him off.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "What happened to you?"

"I took a bad trip by floo," he explained.

"Are you coming into Gringotts, Harry?" asked Hermione.

"As soon as I've found the Weasleys," he replied.

"You won't have to wait long," said Hagrid, directing our attention to where Ron, Fred, George, Percy, and Mr. Weasley were running through the crowd to get to us.

Mr. Weasley spoke first, panting from the exertion. "Harry, we hoped you'd only gone one grate too far. Molly's frantic. She's coming now."

"Where'd you come out?" asked Ron.

"Knockturn Alley," replied Hagrid in a disapproving tone.

"Excellent!" declared Fred and George in unison.

"We've never been allowed in," explained Ron.

"I should ruddy well think not," declared Hagrid.

Mrs. Weasley arrived on the scene, dragging Ginny by the arm. "Oh, Harry. Oh my dear. You could have been anywhere."

Molly Weasley took a brush from her bag and got the soot off Harry while Arthur Weasley magically repaired Harry's glasses. Hagrid excused himself, eventually escaping Arthur Weasley's grateful handshakes.

"Guess who I saw in Borgin and Burkes?" asked Harry as we entered the bank. "Malfoy and his father."

"Did Lucius Malfoy buy anything?" asked Mr. Weasley.

"No. He was selling," said Harry.

"So, he's worried," mused Mr. Weasley. "Oh, I'd love to get Lucius Malfoy for something."

"What's Borgin and Burkes?" I asked, having trouble following the conversation.

"A pawn shop specializing in dark artifacts," said Arthur Weasley.

"You be careful, Arthur," said Mrs. Weasley. "That family's trouble. Don't go biting off more than you can chew."

"So, you don't think I'm a match for Lucius Malfoy?" asked Mr. Weasley. The argument was forestalled by Arthur Weasley noticing the Grangers standing nervously at a counter.

Harry and the Weasleys went down to their vaults while Sloth, Loki, and I waited up top with Hermione and her parents. When they returned, the plan was to split up and meet back at the bookstore in an hour. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sloth, Loki, and I headed off together.

"What happened to you this summer?" I asked Harry when we were alone. "Ron sent us an owl saying he had to go and rescue you."

Harry explained that a house elf named Dobby had shown up at his house to deliver a cryptic warning. When Harry'd refused to stay away from Hogwarts, Dobby had used magic to get Harry in trouble with both the Ministry and with his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. In retaliation, the Dursleys had locked him in his room, with bars on the windows for three days, pushing insufficient food through a door slot, until Ron, Fred, and George had rescued him. Dobby was apparently the one intercepting our letters.

"Those monsters," I declared when Harry had finished his story, my voice shaking. "Child abusing psychopaths. They're not getting away with this."

"Solitary confinement for messing up a party?" said Sloth appalled. "You're not going back to those people."

"I appreciate the sentiment," said Harry, "but can we not talk about the Dursleys? I'm back in the wizarding world where I belong, and I want to enjoy it."

"Sure," I said, making a mental note to stick close to Harry on the Hogwarts express at the end of the school year. "That reminds me, we have a birthday present for you."

Over an ice cream, I showed Harry the small metal disc I'd designed and explained its use. One side had a seal drawn in dried blood. The other had a transmutation circle with a small red stone fragment in its center. Hopefully, the next time Voldemort went after Harry, it would be the last time.

* * *

Flourish and Blotts was the name of the bookstore we agreed to meet at. It was more crowded than I'd ever seen it. Apparently there was a book signing.

Hermione squealed in glee at the identity of the signer. "We can actually meet him! I mean, he's written almost the whole book list!"

We picked up our books and got in line with the Grangers and Weasleys.

"Oh, there you are," said Mrs. Weasley on sighting us. "Good. We'll be able to see him in a minute."

"Wait, this is the signing line, not the checkout line?" I asked.

"Just get your copies signed, Greed. What harm could it do?" said Sloth. "It's nt like we had more plans today. Besides, when else are we going to meet Gilderoy Lockheart?"

"I just wanted to pay and get out of this crowd. Maybe start reading my new books," I pouted.

Lockheart had blue eyes, wavy blonde hair, and the brightest, whitest teeth I'd ever seen. When a newspaper photographer stepped on Ron's foot eliciting an angry comment, Gilderoy Lockheart looked over at us.

"It can't be Harry Potter!" He grabbed Harry and pulled him to the center of the crowd. My hand was on my wand and it was halfway out of its holster before I realized he didn't mean Harry any harm.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," called out Lockheart, pinning an uncomfortable looking Harry to his side, "what an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for some time. When young Harry here stepped into Florish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography, (which I shall be happy to present him now, free of charge). He had no idea that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, Magical Me. He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

By the time Harry'd broken free, he was loaded down with the complete collected works of Gilderoy Lockheart, which he promptly handed over to Ginny Weasley, since they needed free books more than he did.

"Bet you loved that, didn't you, Potter?" spat Draco Malfoy. "Famous Harry Potter. Can't even go into a book shop without making the front page."

"Leave him alone! He didn't want all that!" said Ginny.

"Potter, you've got yourself a girlfriend," taunted Malfoy.

"Jealous, Draco?" I asked when the rest of us managed to squeeze through the crowd to where Harry was.

"I thought I'd find you here," sneered Malfoy. "That mutt of yours is running loose outside. If you aren't careful, someone's going to decide it's a danger that needs to be put down."

"Oh, it's you," said Ron, looking down his nose at Malfoy. "Bet you're surprised to see Harry here, eh?"

"Not as surprised as I am to see you in a shop, Weasley. I suppose your parents will have to go hungry for a month to pay for all those."

Ron lunged at Draco, and I prepared to back him up when Harry and Hermione held Ron back. I clenched my fist and let it go, but if I found out he'd done anything to Loki, I'd have to choose between testing my new soul coins, rendering his life force into Philosopher's Stone material, or just breaking his body down molecule by molecule. Until he tried something like that though, Draco wasn't worth it.

Arthur Weasley made his way over to us. "Ron, what are you doing? It's too crowded in here. Let's go outside."

"Well, well, well. Arthur Weasley," said a tall man with straight blonde hair and pale blue eyes like Draco's.

"Lucius," said Arthur, nodding curtly.

"Busy time at the Ministry I hear. All those raids. I do hope they're paying you overtime?" He pulled a battered, secondhand introductory transfiguration textbook from Ginny's cauldron and inspected it. "Obviously not. Dear me, what's the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don't even pay you well for it?"

"We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy," shot back Mr. Weasley.

"Clearly. The company you keep, Weasley. And I thought your family could sink no lower," said Lucius Malfoy, eyeing the Grangers menacingly.

Arthur hurled himself bodily at Lucius. Books rained down on the pair as they battered each other. Hagrid happened by and broke the two men up to disappointment of Fred and George who'd been cheering their father on.

"Here girl. Take your book. It's the best your father can give you," said Lucius, thrusting the transfiguration book back into Ginny's hands and exiting the shop. Draco trailed after.

Hagrid helped Mr. Weasley straighten his robes and said, "You should have ignored him, Arthur. Rotten to the core, the whole family, everyone knows that. No Malfoy's worth listening to. Bad blood, that's what it is. Come on now. Let's get out of here."

"There's no such thing as 'bad blood'," I said as we exited the shop. "Everyone's responsible for their own behavior. Don't excuse them with 'bad blood' and don't insult good people who had shitty parents with 'bad blood'."

"Watch your language!" snapped Mrs. Weasley, swatting me across the back of the head as Hagrid looked abashed at my admonishment. "And you, a fine example to set for the children, brawling in public. What Gilderoy Lockheart must've thought."

"He was pleased," reported Fred. "Didn't you hear him as we were leaving? He was asking that bloke from the Daily Prophet if he'd be able to work the fight into his report. Said it was all publicity."

The group made its way to the Leaky Cauldron. Harry and the Weasleys demonstrated the use of Floo Powder by taking a pinch and tossing it into a fireplace in the Leaky Cauldron. They each called out "the Burrow," and vanished amid green flames. The Grangers left by the main entrance to muggle London. Meanwhile, I turned around with Sloth and Loki to buy my own jar of Floo Powder to try out. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Harry not talking about his home life in school during book one meant that no one realized the problem with letting him go back. The treatment he got during the summer is pretty much impossible to ignore. It won't be as easy to resolve Harry's home life as anyone thinks, but the first step is finding out there's a problem.


	11. Chapter 15: Wands Unicorns and Thestrals

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 15) Wands and Unicorns and Thestrals  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

By the time we were heading for Platform 9 3/4, I'd verified that Floo Powder only worked in wizard fireplaces. Rather than having power in itself, it worked as a trigger for a kind of magical transportation infrastructure that linked wizard fireplaces, overseen by the Ministry of Magic.

We got to the platform early and were able to stake out a compartment as soon as the train started boarding. Hermione found us shortly after that and we settled in to wait for Harry and Ron. By the time the train lurched into motion, however, neither of them had come.

"Did they find a different compartment?" asked Sloth.

"We'd better make sure," I said. "Harry's got enemies, and that house elf was giving him dire warnings about not coming back to Hogwarts this year."

"We'd best split up," said Hermione, hopping to her feet.

Sloth and Hermione went one way while Loki and I went the other. I found Percy in with the other Prefects and asked if he'd seen Harry or Ron.

"Not since we crossed the barrier," he said. "They were right behind us, but we were all running late, so as soon as we were through, we had to run to catch the train. Fred and George made it. So did Ginny. But I haven't seen Ron or Harry."

"So they missed the train?" I asked.

"I'm sure everything's all right. We can send an owl to mom and dad when we get to Hogwarts."

I went to find the others, cursing the poor communication infrastructure of the wizarding world and desperately missing the radio equipped Amestrian trains. Sloth and Hermione had found the twins, who told basically the same story.

Worried, we returned to our compartment only to find Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle had claimed it while we were out searching. I didn't have the motivation to fight this one, so left to find another compartment to worry about Ron and Harry in during the ride. Unable to find privacy, we kept our speculation to a minimum as the hours passed and the train eventually reached Hogwarts.

While Hagrid led the first years down to the boats, the rest of us were loaded into carriages pulled by emaciated horse-like creatures with leathery, bat like wings folded at their sides. We rode up to the main gates and were allowed straight into the Great Hall where we were forced to separate and go to our own House tables for the start of term feast.

Promising myself I'd ask after Harry first chance I got, I settled in for the sorting ceremony, cheering for the new Ravenclaw first years. Luna Lovegood, a blonde haired young witch with a vaguely distracted expression on her face sat down next to me after the Sorting Hat put her in Ravenclaw.

"I know we can't start Care of Magical Creatures until third year, but does anyone know what those horses that pull the carriages are called?" she asked when the Sorting Ceremony had passed and Snape pulled Dumbledore and McGonagall away for a moment.

"The carriages are spelled," said Michael Corner. "They move on their own."

"What are you talking about, Michael?" I asked. "There was a pair of emaciated horse-like creatures pulling every carriage. How could you not have noticed them there?"

"Don't go making up stories for the first years, Greed," said a fifth year prefect. "Just because her eyes were playing tricks on her doesn't mean you get to have a laugh at her expense."

"My eyes weren't playing tricks," said Luna firmly. "Although if none of you saw them, maybe they were invisible."

"But if they were invisible, how did we see them?" I asked.

"I don't know. That's why I wanted to know what they were called. It'd make looking them up easier."

After Dumbledore and Snape arrived back, rumors started to spread that Harry and Ron had arrived in a flying car. Apparently Mr. Weasley added more technically legal features that would upset his wife than just the added space in the passenger compartment and trunk. I breathed a sigh of relief that nothing had happened to them, and was able to actually enjoy desert before it was time to go up to our dorms.

As we went, I told Luna, "I know the groundskeeper. He'll know the name of those horses."

Sloth and I met with Harry, Ron, and Hermione the next day, where we verified that they had indeed flown the car to Hogwarts, and nearly gotten expelled for it. Apparently, the barrier wouldn't let them through. They'd crashed into a whomping willow tree, which they advised we avoid approaching, since it had a tendency to hit back. Ron's wand had been damaged in the collision with the ornery tree, but he'd taped it back together.

At breakfast, Ron got a letter from home. Ordinarily, I didn't see any mail from teh other houses while sitting at the Ravenclaw table, but this letter contained a magically amplified version of Molly Weasley's voice screaming at the top of her lungs. She yelled at Ron for stealing the car, and noted that her husband was facing an inquiry at work as a result of their trip.

That excitement over, I promised Luna I'd introduce her to Hagrid come the weekend and hurried off to my first class of the term. Defence Against the Dark Arts with Gilderoy Lockheart.

Lockheart introduced himself and handed out a quiz. Bizarrely, all the questions were random trivia about himself rather than anything that would assess our knowledge of defense as we started second year. Fortunately, I'd assimilated this year's text books with a red stone and could provide the answers.

"I see Mr. Oren's been paying attention," said Gildero Lockheart. "Where is the young man who remembered that I state in chapter twelve of Wanderings With Werewolves that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and nonmagic peoples, and that I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewisky?"

I tentatively raised my hand, still unsure of the point of this exercise.

"Excellent," he declared. "Full marks! Ten points for Ravenclaw."

Lockheart then took a large, covered cage from behind his desk and said, "Be warned. It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind. You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm. I must as you not to scream. It might provoke them."

He pulled off the cover revealing that the cage was full of small, bright blue, humanoid creatures, each less than a foot tall. "Yes," said Lockheart, "freshly caught Cornish pixies."

The quiz, the dramatic pronouncement about facing our worst nightmares, and now these pixies. I laughed as I came to the conclusion it had all been a practical joke to lighten the mood of our first defense class after a full term under Voldemort.

"Yes," asked Lockheart smiling.

"I don't think anyone in here has pixies as their worst fear," I noted jovially.

"Don't be so sure," replied Lockheart. "Devilish, tricky little blighters they can be. Right then, let's see what you make of them."

Lockheart opened the cage, and a dozen of the pixies launched out of their cage in every direction. I was on my feet at once, wand in hand and a smile plastered on my face. These fast moving creatures would be great for target practice, and I'd missed using my alchemy in combat. After last year, I had enough incantations to fake it.

"Petrificus Totalus!" I shouted, pointing my wand at the nearest pixie. I hadn't studied its anatomy to tamper with its muscles or nervous system, so I just held it in place with a skintight aura of transmuted air. "Wingardium Leviosa!" I called out, casually flicking my wand in the direction of the cage and causing the pixie to fly right back into it as fast as it'd flown out.

My fellow Ravenclaws weren't doing so well. One girl was screaming while a pixie was entangled in her hair. A pair of pixies were taking turns tearing pages out of another student's books. I was the only one who even had his wand out. The others were either taking cover under their desks, batting at the pixies with their bare hands, or in one case, using a book to knock a pixie out of the air.

I plucked the pixie out of the girl's hair and tossed it back in its cage with my left hand while I paralyzed and levitated two more back in. The student who'd stunned one with a book tossed his defeated foe in after mine. A pixie came out of nowhere and grabbed the back of my collar, lifting me off my feet before the aforementioned book slammed hard into my back, incapacitating that pixie. With a nod, we went back to back and continued thinning out the swarm until they'd all been recaptured.

"Not bad for a first attempt," said Lockheart. "I hope you all see what can be accomplished by carefully reading my books." He clapped a hand on my shoulder.

"They make for a good bludgeon too," I said, nodding to the combatant who'd watched my back.

* * *

This year in Herbology, we were working with mandrakes. The plants' roots took on a very human appearance, and they screamed when uprooted. The seedlings we were repotting could knock a person out for hours with their screams, while a mature plant's scream would be instantly fatal. As a safety precaution, Professor Sprout provided earmuffs. They must've had a minor enchantment on them, since, while wearing them, I could make out no sound whatsoever.

Professor McGonagall was easing everyone back into classwork with a simple beetles to buttons transfiguration. It was still a violation of equivalent exchange that used up r ed stones, but it was far less a violation than the mouse to snuffbox that had been last year's exam.

"Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" asked the brass eagle knocker that barred entrance to Ravenclaw tower when the day was over.

"The egg," I said confidently. "Fossil records of eggs go back millions of years before hte first chicken."

The door didn't open. I sat outside the door fuming as I awaited another student to answer the door and get us inside.

"I already tried egg," I told the next student to arrive. "This thing must've been enchanted before modern evolutionary theory."

Shrugging, she said, "Chicken."

Again, the door didn't open.

"So, you don't want either answer?" I yelled at the door knocker. "Why even give choices if you don't want either one? Is this some sort of stupid wordplay where we're supposed t o answer 'which' since it was the first word in your sentence? That isn't a riddle, and it isn't clever! Not that asking a basic chronological question with a factual answer (which you don't accept) qualifies as a riddle either! Hermione said wizards were bad at logic, and that must double for whoever enchanted you!"

"I'll just go find a prefect," said the student, backing away slowly from my rant.

"It's not like they give the prefects an answer key," I said as she quickly left the scene.

Loki stared between me and the formerly neutral talking door knocker. He seemed to be trying to decide between comforting me and attacking the door that had upset me. He was such a good dog, and I told him so, sitting down on the stairs and ruffling Loki's floppy brown ears with both hands.

"I could just blast a hole in it and go to bed," I mused when I'd calmed down, "or just mimic Sloth's powers with alchemy and pass through a wall. But at this point, I just have to see how this plays out and what the answer it's looking for is."

"Oh," said the prefect when he had heard the riddle. "You got stumped by a classic paradox. There is no answer. The egg births the chicken, and the chicken births the egg. It's a cycle with no beginning or end."

The door swung open.

"But there is an answer," I protested as I entered the common room. "Egg laying creatures have been around way longer than chickens have."

"You're overthinking it," said the prefect, who headed up to his dorm.

"Why does a house that's supposed to be full of clever people not use a simple password system like the Gryffindors use?" I asked Loki with a frustrated sigh as I sat down to do my homework.

* * *

At lunch on Friday, Ron came up to me at the Ravenclaw table.

"You have to help me," he pleaded. "I really messed up this time."

I immediately stood up and followed him out of the Great Hall, taking a large handful of turkey slices with me for Loki, who did still need to eat after all. We found an empty classroom and Ron held up his wand.

"It broke when we crashed into the whomping willow," he explained. "I held it together with some spellotape, but it's been getting worse. This morning, I lost control of it and it beaned Professor Flitwick in the face."

I looked at the wood. There was no tape, and I couldn't detect so much as a crack in it. At that point, I knew why he'd come to me.

"You tried fixing it with alchemy," I said. "What went wrong?"

"I thought I did everything right. Here, I brought the circle I used. But after it was done, I couldn't do any magic with it at all. It doesn't even spark and backfire. It's like it's just a stick."

"I can't be sure," I said, examining the paper he handed me, "but do you remember practicing curses with me and Sloth last year. I learned that magic doesn't really stick to a person or object that's been deconstructed and reduced to its component atoms. I think when you deconstructed your wand in the process of repairing it, the magic stopped sticking to it."

"You mean I killed my wand?" asked Ron, staring at the seemingly intact shaft of wood.

"Looks like," I confirmed. "Like with bioalchemy, if you don't fully understand and account for all the mutually interdependent systems, you're not likely to end up with a living thing after the transmutation."

"You can do bioalchemy," said Ron, pointing to Loki. "Can you fix it?"

"I don't understand how a wand is supposed to work. Not well enough to stimulate the magic using alchemy. You need a new wand."

"If I write home, I'll get another Howler," complained Ron.

"We could try to make you a new wand the conventional way," I suggested. "There are unicorns in the forbidden forest, and a lot of wood, obviously."

"You can do that?" asked Ron, skeptically.

"No idea," I admitted. "As I understand it, you encase a bit of magical material inside a wooden shaft and you've got a wand. Unicorn hair was one of Ollivander's three choice materials to work with. I'd like to try, anyway."

"Couldn't I just do what you do and fake it with alchemy?"

"I'm a master alchemist," I said. "And even with everything I know, I still need amplifiers for some spells, and that's just for the ones I've already figured out how to duplicate. You aren't ready for that. Besides, why would you want to fake it when you can do the real thing?"

"Whatever we're going to do, can we do it soon?" asked Ron. "I don't fancy taking this into a class knowing nothing'll happen when I go to use it."

"Meet me outside the fat lady's portrait tonight," I told him. "With luck, you'll have a new wand by morning."

* * *

That evening, I pulled my new invisibility cloak out of my trunk. Slipping it over my shoulders and pulling the hood over my head, I disappeared from view. I creeped down the stairs, the transmutation circles on the soles of my shoes ensuring that I neither made a sound, nor left footprints. Luna was sitting in an armchair by the fire, reading a magazine. I didn't breathe as I crossed the room.

When I opened the door, Luna said, "It's after curfew, you know. If you go out and get caught, we'll lose house points."

I pulled back my hood. It didn't matter if I was invisible when I left. She'd be able to figure out who had left by process of elimination when I'd gone.

"You're up late," I said.

"I didn't get a chance to finish reading my article earlier. The others were playing keep away with the magazine."

"I went to bed early to fake being asleep," I said. "If I'd been down here, I'd have made them knock it off."

"Where are you going?" asked Luna.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course I can," she said cheerfully. "Whether I will depends on what the secret is."

"Fair enough," I said sitting down across from her. "If I tell you, will you tell me if it's a secret you're willing to keep, then? That way, if you decide not to keep it, I can just decide not to go."

Luna thought about that for a long moment, tapping her upper lip with a finger, then she closed her magazine, set it on a table and nodded. "I think that's fair." She stared at me expectantly.

"I'm going to the forbidden forest."

"There are supposed to be all sorts of magical creatures in there," she said. "Werewolves, centaurs, unicorns, maybe even a crumple horned snorkrak." She sounded excited.

"I'm going to track down a unicorn. I'm doing some magical experiments and I need a tail hair from one," I explained.

"Well, then it's a good thing I caught you," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Unicorns don't like boys very much. You'd never get close enough if I wasn't coming along." She got to her feet.

"You have to keep this secret," I said. "I'm meeting someone and he could end up in worse trouble than us if he gets caught."

Luna nodded her agreement, I pulled the invisibility cloak over both of us, and we walked out of Ravenclaw tower together.

Ron was waiting just outside the portrait of the fat lady who guarded Gryffindor tower. He jumped with surprise when my and Luna's faces appeared out of thin air in front of him.

"You've got an invisibility cloak too?" asked Ron.

"I'm a master alchemist who can make gold," I reminded him. "I can buy pretty much anything I want."

"Hello," said Luna.

"Who's this?" asked Ron.

"Luna Lovegood, Ron Weasley," I introduced them. "Luna's a Ravenclaw first year who volunteered to help us get a unicorn hair."

"What was your plan for getting close to the unicorn without a girl?" asked Luna.

"Let's can the chatter until we're in the forest," I said. "We don't want Filch to catch us out of bed."

Ron quickly got under the cloak with us, and we creeped out of the castle, along the path Filch had taken me for my detention last year. It was pitch dark, and we didn't dare light a lamp, so I shifted to my pale skinned, black haired homunculus form. The purple slitted eyes had better night vision. We paused at Hagrid's hut and listened. A loud snore told us the enormous groundskeeper wasn't out patrolling the forest, so we could do our task unmolested.

"Harry, Hermione, and me are going to visit Hagrid tomorrow," said Ron.

"You should come along, Luna," I said. "We can ask him about the horse creatures."

"Horse creatures?" asked Ron.

"The ones pulling the school carriages," I said. "Hagrid should know what they're called."

The three of us stepped onto the path, picked a direction, and began walking. Voldemort had caught and killed two unicorns the previous year, and I was sure we'd find one of the brilliantly white creatures without too much trouble.

"Stay close and under the cloak," I cautioned. "The centaurs are on good terms with Hagrid, so even if he is asleep, word might get back to him."

"Hagrid wouldn't get us in trouble," said Ron.

"Not deliberately," I said, "but he doesn't exactly know how to keep a secret."

"Fair enough," said Ron.

Three hours later, Ron was convinced we should turn back, while Luna was excitedly encouraging us to continue the search. We'd already had two close calls with the centaurs by then. Finally, our persistence paid off, and the three of us beheld the sight of a brilliantly white furred horse with golden hooves and a single straight horn projecting from its forehead. It was as though the moon was shining down tonight for the sole purpose of illuminating this creature's beauty and grace.

"You're on," I prodded Luna from beneath the invisibility cloak. She stepped into view, a pair of metal sheers in her hand.

"You're beautiful," Luna told the unicorn as she approached. Meanwhile, I steeled myself to kill it if it proved threatening to Luna. Fortunately, such preparation proved unnecessary.

Luna reached out a hand and stroked the creature's nose. Running her hand along the unicorn's flank, the unicorn showed no sign of objecting to her touch. The unicorn allowed Luna to run her fingers through the long silvery strands of hair on its tail.

"Don't worry. This won't hurt a bit," she reassured the unicorn, then used the sheers to clip the hairs off its tail.

I pulled off the cloak, revealing myself and Ron. The unicorn galloped off into the forest. Luna handed me the large handful of unicorn hairs.

"What happened to you?" asked Ron, startled as he stared at me.

I took a moment to remember I'd shifted forms for better night vision. "Nothing happened," I said, sighing at my own absentmindedness. "Sloth and I are shape shifters. I took this form because it can see better in the dark."

"Any other secrets you'd like to share?" asked Ron.

"I'm competing with Hermione for top of the class because I'm really a good deal older than I look, and I use my powers to look this age to fit in," I offered with a shrug.

"So, you're like a metamorphmagus," said Ron.

"You didn't know?" marveled Luna.

"You just found out too," shot back Ron.

"I just though this must've been your plan before I came," said Luna.

"Actually, I was just going to run one down," I said. "I figured if Quirrell could do it, so could I." I clapped my hands and touched my index finger to a nearby tree. Pulling it back, a long, diamond hardened needle, not much thicker than the unicorn hair followed my finger back amid blue sparks of alchemic light until the transmutation ended and I caught the needle.

"What was that?" asked Luna.

"Alchemy," explained Ron. "I'm learning it too."

I threaded one of the unicorn hairs onto my new needle and found an appropriately sized branch that was relatively straight. "We've established that alchemy damages the magic in a wand, so this part has to be done manually." I jammed the needle into one end of the stick and pushed it through until it came out the opposite end. I then used the needle to carefully thread the unicorn hair into the core of the wand. "Give it a try," I said, handing the wand to Ron.

He accepted it and pointed it up. A handful of red sparks flew out of the tip. "It feels funny, but it works," said Ron, sighing with relief.

I was beaming. I'd successfully made a working magic wand. I could add this to the list of magical skills I could actually practice, and wouldn't have to duplicate with alchemy. "Field trip's over," I said happily. "Everyone back under the invisibility cloak."

We quickly gathered together and made our way back to Hogwarts. Luna and I dropped Ron off at Gryffindor tower and returned to our own house common room together.

"Do you do that often?" asked Luna when we were back.

"It depends on what's going on," I said. "Last year was pretty eventful."

"You should turn back to normal now," she reminded me.

I shifted back to my human appearance, bid her goodnight, and climbed the stairs to find Loki asleep at the foot of my bed, with the cloth dummy I'd transmuted from the bed sheets undisturbed. I changed the dummy back, put away my invisibility cloak, and climbed into bed myself, feeling very accomplished.

* * *

At breakfast, I introduced Luna around to Sloth and Hermione. Ron showed us a note Harry'd left indicating he had an unexpected Quidditch practice. We agreed to head out to the field and wait for him, since Harry was the closest to Hagrid.

At the field, we found an excitable Gryffindor first year named Collin waiting in the stands with a camera. He happily showed off a wizard photo of Professor Locheart and what Collin assured me was Harry's arm, which Lockheart was attempting to drag into frame.

The Gryffindor Quidditch team emerged from the changing room, and Collin started lining up his camera for a picture of Harry.

"Aren't you finished yet?" asked Ron, impatiently as Harry came out holding his broom.

"Haven't even started," sighed Harry. "Wood's been teaching us new moves."

The Gryffindors had barely had time to take their first warmup lap when the Slytherin team arrived on the field. Draco Malfoy was wearing Quidditch robes. Our group left the stands to see what was going on while the Gryffindor team landed to confront the Slytherins.

Ron was the first to speak when we arrived. "What's happening? Why aren't you playing? And what's he doing here?"

"I'm the new Slytherin seeker, Weasley," said Draco. "Everyone's just been admiring the brooms my father's bought our team. Good, aren't they? But perhaps the Gryffindor team will be able to raise some gold and get new brooms too. You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives. I expect a museum would bid for them."

"At least no one on the Gryffindor team had to buy their way in. They got in on pure talent," shot Hermione.

"No one asked your opinion, you filthy little mudblood," spat Draco.

Draco's comment provoked an extreme reaction from the Gryffindors. Fred and George lunged at him, but were held back by the Gryffindor captain Wood. Ron's face twisted with rage and he drew his new wand, pointing it at Draco as the Slytherin team prepared to back up and defend Malfoy.

"How dare you? You'll pay for that one, Malfoy!" yelled Ron. Green light seemed to build up, visibly leaking from teh cracks in the wand wood. Then, Ron was enveloped in green light as his wand blasted itself into splinters in his hand. Ron fell backward onto the ground.

Hermione rushed to him, calling out, "Ron, Ron, are you alright?"

Ron sat up, staring at his empty wand hand. A few splinters were embedded in his palm, but he was otherwise uninjured. Then his eyes bulged and he vomited up a number of slugs.

The backfired curse effectively ended any threat of immediate violence as the Slytherins were utterly incapacitated with laughter. Draco in particular laughed so hard he collapsed to the ground and beat his fists on the grass.

"We'd better get him to Hagrid's," said Harry. "It's nearest." He and Hermione helped Ron to his feet as he continued to spit up large slugs.

Sloth shooed off Colin, who was getting underfoot, and I apologized profusely to Ron about the malfunctioning wand that had done this to him. Luna just quietly tagged along.

As we approached Hagrid's cabin, Harry caught sight of Professor Lockheart exiting. Harry immediately dove into a bush, pulling Ron with him and hissed, "Quick, behind here!"

"But maybe he can help Ron," I suggested, before Harry dragged me in, Sloth, Luna, and Hermione having already hidden behind the bush at Harry's urging.

Lockheart was loudly speaking with Hagrid. "It's a simple matter if you know what you're doing. If you need help, you know where I am. I'll let you have a copy of my book. I'm surprised you haven't got one. I'll sign one and send it over. Well, goodbye."

Harry waited until Lockheart was out of sight before letting us proceed to Hagrid's. By that time, Hagrid had gone inside and shut the door. Harry's knock summoned Hagrid instantly.

"Been wondering when you'd come to see me. Come in. Come in. Thought you mighta been Professor Lockheart back again."

We quickly explained what had happened to Ron as we got him inside. Hagrid gave Ron a large basin.

"Better out than in. Get 'em all up, Ron," said Hagrid, cheerfully.

"I don't think there's anything we can do except wait for it to stop," concluded Hermione as she kept an eye on Ron. "That's a difficult curse to work at the best of times, but with a defective wand..."

"I had no idea this could happen," I told Ron. "I'll make it up to you. I promise. We'll got to Diagon Alley and I'll buy you a new wand from Ollivander's. I am so sorry."

Meanwhile, Hagrid made tea and Fang greeted Loki. Both dogs were excited to see one another again.

Harry asked, "What did Lockheart want with you, Hagrid?"

"Giving advice on getting keplies out of a well. Like I don't know. And banging on about some banshee he banished. If one word of it was true, I'll eat my kettle."

"I think you're being a bit unfair," said Hermione. "Professor Dumbledore obviously thought he was the best man for the job."

"He was the only man for the job, and I mean the only one," said Hagrid, offering us all fudge. "Getting very difficult to find anyone for the dark arts job. People aren't too keen to take it on, see. They're starting to think it's jinxed. No one's lasted long for a while now. So tell me, who was he trying to curse?" He indicated Ron.

"Malfoy," I said.

"He called Hermione something," said Harry. "It must've been really bad, because everyone went wild."

"It was bad," said Ron, gasping for breath. The first words he'd managed since the backfiring curse. "Malfoy called her 'mudblood', Hagrid." Then Ron puked up the batch of slugs he'd had to hold in to get that much out.

"He didn't?" said Hagrid angrily.

"He did," said Luna, obviously no more pleased than Ron or Hagrid.

"I don't know what it means," said Hermione. "I could tell it was really rude, of course."

"It's about hte most insulting thing he could think of," said Ron, fighting down another slug attack. "Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is muggle born. You know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards, like Malfoy's family, who think they're better than everyone else because they're what people call pure blood." He belched up another slug and continued. "I mean, the rest of us know it doesn't make any difference at all. Look at Neville Longbottom. He's pure blood, and he can hardly stand a cauldron the right way up."

"And they haven't invented a spell our Hermione can't do," added Hagrid. "And you're muggleborn too, aren't you, Greed."

I nodded.

"It's a disgusting thing to call someone," continued Ron. "Dirty blood, see. Common blood. It's ridiculous. Most wizards these days are half blood anyway. If we hadn't married muggles, we'd've died out."

Ron resumed vomiting slugs into the basin.

Hagrid replied philosophically, "Well, I don't blame you for trying to curse him, Ron, but maybe it was a good thing your wand backfired. I expect Lucius Malfoy would've come marching up to the school if you'd cursed his son. Least you're not in trouble."

"True," said Sloth. "Didn't Dumbledore threaten to expel you if you broke the rules again?"

Harry nodded.

Taking advantage of the lull in conversation, Luna piped up. "Hagrid, do you know what the horse creatures that pull the school carriages are called?"

"You can see them" he verified, slightly subdued.

Luna nodded. "But Hermione can't."

"Well, I should ruddy well hope not," declared Hagrid. "They're called thestrals. I take care of the school's herd. And the reason some people can see 'em and some people can't is they're only visible to people who've seen death."

"That explains Sloth and I," I said in a subdued tone.

Harry nodded. He'd been in the room when I killed Quirrell.

"During the last war, there were lots of students that could see them," said Hagrid. "It's a sign of the times and a ruddy good one too, that most of the students just think the carriages drive themselves."

"Can we see them?" asked Luna.

"I don't see why not," said Hagrid. "They're real friendly."

"Are you two going to be okay?" Sloth asked Ron and Hermione. "I don't think there'll be much for you to see."

Ron gave a thumbs up and spat another batch of slugs into the basin. Hagrid led Sloth, Luna, Harry, and I outside and lured the thestrals in using a bucket of what looked like pig's blood.

"A lot of folks treat 'em like they're a bad omen, 'cause of the death thing and how they look," said Hagrid approaching one, who let him stroke its muzzle. Up close, I could confirm their skeletal appearance was due to having pale skin stretched tightly over a thin body. Another testament to magical creatures being tougher and stronger than physics and biology said they should be, the threstrals' emaciated appearance didn't seem to leave them weaker or slower than a normal horse.

As I stroked the mane of one, Sloth said, "Better be careful, Ron's in bad enough shape from unicorn hair."

"You want to ride 'em?" offered Hagrid, clearly enjoying showing off the herd. "Not far, obviously, just a short up and down. They're trained for it."

Luna happily mounted immediately, while Harry hesitated for a long moment. Sloth and I each picked one, getting on in time for Harry to make his decision and join us.

"All right, hang on tight," said Hagrid. Then to the thestrals, "Just a quick flight along the tree line and back."

Understanding, the thestrals spread their bat like wings and launched into the air with surprising speed. Loki ran along the ground under us for a few dozen feet, but couldn't keep pace. I doubted he could keep pace in his chimera form. Wind whipped through our hair. Our robes flapped and billowed as we shot through the air. I could feel my spine compressed by g-forces as the thestrals banked hard and turned back toward Hagrid's hut. In no time, they deposited us back on the ground.

"That was faster than my racing broom," marveled Harry.

"They're the fastest way to travel if you want to see any scenery at all," said Hagrid happily.

As we went back inside, Hagrid said, "Harry, got a bone to pick with you. I've heard you've been giving out signed photos. How come I haven't got one?"

"I have not been giving out signed photos," declared Harry, angrily. "If Lockheart's still spreading that around-"

"I'm only joking," said Hagrid with a laugh. "I knew you hadn't really. I told Lockheart you didn't need to. You're more famous than him without trying."

"Bed he didn't like that," said Harry, grinning satisfied.

"Don't think he did," said Hagrid slyly. "And then I told him I'd never read one of his books and he decided to go."

We bid Hagrid goodbye at that point and headed back to the school for lunch. Ron's slug attacks were getting farther between, and the slugs he coughed up were getting smaller. As we entered, we were accosted by Professor McGonagall.

"There you are, Potter, Weasley. You will do your detentions this evening."

"What're we doing, Professor?" asked Ron.

"You will be polishing the silver in the trophy room with Mr. Filch. And no magic, Weasley. Elbow grease. And you, Potter, will be helping Professor Lockheart answer his fan mail."

"Oh, n-" began Harry, suppressing himself, then more carefully, "Professor, can't I go and do the trophy room too?"

"Certainly not," said McGonagall with finality. "Professor Lockheart requested you particularly. Eight o'clock sharp. Both of you."

After she'd gone, I told Ron, "At least that leaves us time to get your new wand." 

* * *

The Ravenclaw common room was empty when I brought Ron in. The riddle asking what spends all day on its feet before spending the night under the bed with its tongue hanging out was answered with "shoe". I told Loki to stay while I retrieved the floo powder from my trunk.

Ron took a pinch, threw it into the fire, and stepped into the green flames. Pausing to make sure he wasn't going to have another slug attack, he said, "Diagon Alley," and vanished.

I followed suit, and after a ride through the disorienting floo network, emerged from a fireplace in the Leaky Cauldron. Ron was already waiting for me.

"Why do we have the train if the floo network gets us there and back that fast?" I asked Ron as we stepped into Diagon Alley.

"It's mostly for the sake of the muggleborns," said Ron. "Their parents wouldn't know how to use floo powder, or be very happy if their kids stepped into a fire and vanished for a year."

"Good point," I acknowledged. "Hermione's parents went pale when your family flooed off."

We stepped into Ollivander's wand shop together. Ollivander was there, and he smiled before sweeping across the shop to greet us.

"Come to make another try and see if a wand chooses you?" he asked, staring at me in a manner that was slightly unnerving.

"No," I said. "I put something together that's working for me. I'm here about Ron."

"I don't believe I've seen you in my shop before," he said, transferring his attention to Ron. "A bit old to be seeking your first wand, aren't you?"

"I've been using my brother Charlie's old wand until now," he said, embarrassed. "There was an accident and it broke."

"For the best," said Ollivander in a clipped tone. "Unicorn hair wands are among the most loyal and consistent. They almost never perform their best magic for anyone but their first master. Here, try this one."

Ron took two tries before Ollivander found his match. I paid and slipped out before he could question me further about my fake wand. We flooed back to the Ravenclaw common room and I ushered Ron out before anyone caught him in there.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Luna was introduced far too late in cannon. She should, by all rights, be utterly impossible to miss, even as oblivious as Harry tends to be sometimes.


	12. Chapter 17: The 2nd Death of Sir Nick

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 17) The Second Death of Sir Nicholas  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

Ron's slug attacks had cleared up by the next day, and his new wand was working perfectly. His usual resentment about us paying for things for him was soothed by my infinite wealth, the fact that the wand was an apology gift, and the fact that this year, he'd be learning to turn lead into gold too.

Neither Ron nor Harry had anything good to say about their detentions, though Harry did have an interesting experience near the end. Apparently, a disembodied voice had said things like, "Let me rip you. Let me tear you. Let me kill you," near the end of his detention. Lockheart apparently hadn't heard anything, and given how late it was, Harry was probably dozing a bit, but he was adamant that he'd really heard it, and arguing the point didn't seem worth it.

As it was still the weekend, I started in on continuing Ron's alchemy lessons while Harry was dragged off to the Quidditch field to make up for the practice the Slytherins had interrupted yesterday. I decided Ron would either stick with the training or not no matter what I did, so I started the lessons on elemental transmutations with the circle for turning lead into gold. Ron burned that array into his memory, and tried it out a dozen or more times. Here was the expression of awe and wonder at his newfound powers that hadn't come with his first transmutation like it had for me, but had come none the less.

"I-" started Ron as he stared down at a small pile of gold bars in the center of a transmutation circle. "Where do I tell people this came from?"

"Greed and I said we were bringing in money from out of the country," said Sloth. "We didn't really want to draw attention."

"On the other hand," I said, "there's no reason you have to hide that you can do this. You could just explain your windfall with the truth, that you learned alchemy and have a key piece of knowledge that makes it possible to transmute gold without a Stone."

"You should think hard about that, though," warned Sloth. "Once you become famous, you can't turn back. Ask Harry."

"I'll think about it," said Ron seriously.

"If making gold was all you wanted, we're done, then," I said. "On the other hand, I've still got plenty more to teach. Are you still in?"

"Yeah," said Ron after a moment's contemplation. "I still need to master the other elemental transmutations."

"That's what I was hoping you'd say," I said with a smile. Then I started taking him through the other metal transmutations.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, we were all able to settle into a routine. I stayed closer to Luna in the common room to help discourage the bullying. It was somewhat successful in that they didn't try anything when I was actually in the room.

Transfiguration continued to be simple enough to translate into alchemy, while charms continuously offered new challenges. A tickling charm required me to spend a great deal of time and effort working out how to directly stimulate nerves by controling the balance of ions in the neuron I wanted to fire. Getting the right nerves to fire in the right way took some self-experimentation. The early attempts would make a very effective torture spell, but I eventually got the tickling charm to work.

I had cause to rejoice in my homonculus body once again as Sloth and I were untouched by a cold that swept through the school. Fortunately, there was a potion that could cure it in the rest of the student body.

My opinion of our defence professor gradually shifted to align with Harry's. The joke of a quiz from our first class had apparently been meant to be taken seriously, as the rest of the class was centered around teaching how awesome Gilderoy Lockheart was, rather than providing meaningful knowledge about dark creatures or curses. The pixie fight proved to be an outlier, as Lockheart refused to bring in creatures to practice on again after he failed to recapture them during another class. It was now painfully obvious I was better at Defense Against the Dark Arts than our professor, and that his books were made up trash full of impossibilities like him curing a werewolf, despite the condition being incurable according to every other reference.

Loki and Fang were happily reunited and played together often. Sloth and I continued to find time between classes to meet, share tips on mimicking spells, and generally talk to someone for whom this world's culture was equally alien. She continued to complain about the workload, but she was clearly enjoying her time here. Because of how much the Quidditch teams were practicing, particularly Gryffindor, we barely had time to stop in to the lab, harvest our red stones, and reset the planters to grow more.

One day, in late October, Sloth and I were sitting outside discussing the best way to use alchemy to prevent heat transfer in preparation for our next charms class on flame freezing charms. Loki and Fang were racing one another to catch a stick I'd throw every now and then. Harry came up to us looking nervous and uncomfortable.

"Hi, Harry," said Sloth, waving to him. "Enjoying the clear weather after all that rain?"

"I still haven't dried out from Quidditch practice in the downpour this morning," rep-lied Harry, sitting down in the grass with us.

"I can help with that," I said, drawing my wand and pointing it at him. The alchemic array carved in the wooden shaft flared blue for a moment, and all the water on Harry's body and soaked into his clothes instantly evaporated into the air.

"Thanks," said Harry. "Anyway, I wanted to ask you something. Do you know Nearly Headless Nick?"

"He's the Gryffindor house ghost, right?" said Sloth. "The Fat Friar mentions him every now and then. Usually in an argument about Peeves."

"Yeah," said Harry. "Well, last night after Quidditch practice, Filch brought me down to his office for dripping mud everywhere. Nick got me out of trouble by convincing Peeves to distract Filch."

"Good for you," I congratulated him.

"I asked if there was anything I could do to pay him back, and he asked me to come to his deathday party. It's the same time as the Halloween feast. Please, come with me."

"Sounds like fun," I said.

"We have been meaning to do more with the ghosts," noted Sloth.

"So, how's Quidditch practice been going? We hardly ever see you anymore," I said.

"Wood's been working us harder than ever," said Harry, "but I don't know if it'll make a difference. Those Nimbus 2001s they have are going to leave us in the dust."

"Speed isn't everything," said Sloth comfortingly. "You still need good players, and those aren't the ones that have to buy their way in."

"We're both rooting for you against the Slytherins," I said cheerfully.

Harry got up and bid us farewell. When he'd gone, I said, "And now we know what to get Harry for Christmas."

"Won't be in time for the game against Slytherin," noted Sloth. "We'd be sabotaging our own houses."

"Harry's broom is already pretty much top of the line," I argued. "Getting their player with the best broom a slightly better one won't make that much difference."

"I guess you're right," conceded Sloth. "Did you want to be the one to floo to Diagon Alley to pick it up? Ordering it by owl wouldn't be at all discrete."

"I'll floo out tonight," I said, nodding.

* * *

When Loki and I got back to Ravenclaw tower that night, I found Luna lifting cushions of the common room chairs.

"Is everything okay, Luna?" I asked.

"I'm trying to find my homework for tomorrow. The tower has a real problem with nargles."

"Nargles?" I asked.

"They're a tiny magical creature that like to steal and hide people's things," replied Luna matter of factly. "They're why socks go missing in the wash."

"How many times have the nargles taken your things since you got to Hogwarts?" I asked, helping her look.

"At least twice a week," she said. "They've never been this bad at home. I've written my father to send me a back issue of the Quibbler that had some advice for getting rid of them."

"And has anyone else in the tower been targeted by the nargles?" I asked, suspecting the answer.

"No one's mentioned it."

"I didn't think so. Luna, I don't think it's nargles. The other students who were bullying you earlier probably stoke and hid your things. They did it to me last year." I pulled a rolled parchment out from behind a book case and handed it to Luna.

"Thank you," she said on verifying it was her missing report.

"I had to start locking my trunk with alchemy to make them give up," I explained. "I can help you secure your things the same way."

I went to walk up the stairs to the girls' dorms, and a loud alarm blared through the room. The spiral staircase transfigured itself into a smooth slide that was nearly frictionless. The transmutation circles on my shoes, originally designed to lep me keep my footing in life or death situations, and only later expanded to their current versatility, were the only reason I was still standing.

Before I'd fully assessed what had happened, the other Ravenclaw students came down to investigate. Most of the younger students were as confused as I was. It was only when one of the prefects spoke up that I understood what had happened.

"Looks like a little pervert tried to sneak in to the girls' dormitory."

Laughter erupted from the gathered masses, with me standing there vaguely embarrassed as the central object of scorn.

"He was trying to help me secure my trunk," declared Luna, coming to my defense.

"I'll bet he was," sneered Michael Corner. "I guess the Hufflepuff girl wasn't enough for him."

"You leave her out of this," I snapped angrily. My wand was in my hand, and all thought of my own embarrassment flew from my mind.

"Which her?" asked Michael, feeling safe among the large number of other students here to ridicule me. "Your girlfriend in Hufflepuff or Looney Lovegood?"

"One more word against either of them and you'll be vomiting slugs until morning," I warned him hotly.

"That's enough!" declared the same prefect who'd called me a pervert, recognizing things were getting out of hand. "Everyone off to bed. And if I hear anyone hasn't let this drop, whoever it is'll lose five points for Ravenclaw."

* * *

They didn't drop it, and by the time Halloween rolled around, it was only through frequent threats of bodily harm that I managed to not be constantly bombarded with questions about a love triangle between me, Sloth, and Luna. Sloth took the rumors with good humor. When I started to explain what actually happened, Sloth waived me off, noting she already figured the event in question had been perfectly innocent.

Luna hardly seemed to notice the rumors at all. At most, she spent a bit more time with her nose buried in a copy of the Quibbler, a magazine I learned was edited by her father, and which the other students didn't hold in particularly high regard. I ordered a subscription half out of spite.

As a result of the bullying, I was the most cheerful of the five of us who made our way down to Nearly Headless Nick's deathday party and away from the Halloween feast. Nick had invited Ron, Hermione, Sloth, and I in order to entice Harry to come. And while Hermione was fascinated to learn how the ghostly revel worked, I was just happy to avoid the large social gathering in the Great Hall.

Black candles shedding pale, blue light marked the path down into the dungeons where the celebration was being held. I'd learned that passing through a ghost felt like being doused in ice water, so it was no surprise that the temperature dropped noticeably as we approached a large gathering. A musical saw was being played.

"Is that supposed to be music?" demanded Ron incredulously before Nick came into view.

"My dear friends," greeted Nearly Headless Nick somberly. "Welcome, welcome. So pleased you could come." He bowed deeply, removing his hat as he did so.

There were hundreds of guests, though we five were the only ones still living. A long tale at the far side of the room was set with food, including a large, tombstone like cake. Black velvet draped every inch of the room, and it was cold enough to see our breath.

"Shall we have a look around?" suggested Harry.

"Careful not to step through anyone," added Ron.

"That does seem like it'd be rude," I agreed.

Ron gave me a look as we started circling around the dance floor.

"Too bad," noted Sloth. "If we didn't have to worry so much about that, I'd have liked to get out on the dance floor."

"Next party with dancing," I promised her.

"Oh no. Turn back. Turn back. I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle," said Hermione urgently.

"Who?" asked Harry as we all reversed course.

"She haunts one of the toilets in the girls' bathroom on the first floor," explained Hermione.

"She haunts a toilet?" asked Harry, trying to process why anyone would want to spend their afterlife doing anything of the sort.

"Yes," confirmed Hermione. "It's been out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it. It's awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you."

"Look, food!" Ron said as he steered us toward the buffet. It soon became clear the food wasn't meant for the living, as it had all been left to rot. A moldy, green block of cheese was the only thing that looked remotely edible.

One of the ghosts passed his mouth through a piece of rotten fish, prompting Harry to ask if they could taste it that way. The sad, "Almost," from the ghost made me very glad I had an immortal body, since that kind of sensory deprivation sounded awful.

"I expect they've let it rot to give it a stronger flavor," posited Hermione.

"Can we move?" asked Ron. "I feel sick."

We turned around and found ourselves face to face with Peeves the poltergeist. He offered us some rotten peanuts, then said, "Heard you talking about poor Myrtle. Rude you was about poor Myrtle. Oy Myrtle!"

Hermione talked fast and low. "Oh no, Peeves. Don't tell her what I said. She'll be really upset. I didn't mean it. I don't mind her. Er, hello, Myrtle."

"What?" she asked, huffing unhappily.

"How are you Myrtle? It's nice to see you out of the toilet," said Hermione, trying to control the conversation before Peeves could cause trouble. It was a lost cause.

"Miss Granger was just talking about you," said Peeves.

"Just saying... saying... how nice you look tonight," Hermione lied.

"You're making fun of me," said Myrtle, starting to tear up.

"She wasn't," I said, futilely trying to avert a breakdown.

"No, honestly, didn't I just say how nice Myrtle's looking?" prompted Hermione, nudging Harry and Ron, who promptly tried to back Hermione up.

"Don't lie to me," said Myrtle sobbing. "Do you think I don't know what people call me behind my back? Fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!"

"You've forgotten pimply," added Peeves helpfully, nudging Myrtle over the edge and prompting her to run off trailing spectral tears. Peeves followed her, pelting her with rotten nuts yelling, "Pimply, pimply!"

I turned to Sloth and said, "Never listen to Peeves about anything that might upset you. He's probably lying, and even if he's not, he's making it sound worse."

Sloth nodded. "Too bad about the whole 'indestructible spirit of chaos' thing."

As we talked, the ghost of honor floated over to us, asking, "Enjoying yourselves?"

"Oh yes," said Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Sloth and I looked dubious, but didn't contradict them. Nick was the Gryffindor ghost and they knew him better.

"Not a bad turnout," admired Nick. "The Wailing Widow came all the way up from Kent. It's nearly time for my speech. I'd better go and warn the orchestra." A horn blared and Nick said bitterly, "Oh, here we go."

A dozen headless horsemen galloped through a nearby wall. Nick didn't look happy to see them. The one who'd blown the horn (while holding his head under his arm) dismounted and plopped his head onto his neck and clapped Nearly Headless Nick on the shoulder in a too familiar gesture for how stiff Nick was standing.

"Nick! How are you? Head still hanging in there?"

"Welcome, Patrick," said Nick, falling back on etiquette to mask his discomfort.

"Live ones!" said Patrick, giving an exaggerated start so his head fell off his shoulders again. The assembled crowd laughed and applauded his antics.

"Very amusing," said Nick in a tone that suggested he was anything but amused.

"Don't mind Nick," said Patrick's head to the crowd. "Still upset we won't let him join the hunt. But I mean to say, look at the fellow."

I didn't know the Gryffindor ghost well, but the sudden change from being pleased at the turnout to being bitter and awkward at his own party was every bit as obvious as Myrtle's emotional state had been.

"I think Nick's very frightening, and er-" started Harry awkwardly.

"Ha! Bet he asked you to say that!" laughed Patrick's head from the floor.

"If I could have everyone's attention, it's time for my speech," said Nearly Headless Nick as he ascended to the podium. He began to try and draw the attention of the crowd, but the Headless Hunt, obviously skilled showmen, kept the crowed's attention on them by starting a game of head hockey.

"I can't stand much more of this," said Ron.

"I know what you mean," I said, looking at Nick as he gloomily became marginalized at his own five hundredth deathday party.

"Let's go," said Harry, who led us out into the hall. As we headed toward the Great Hall to catch the tail end of the feast, Harry suddenly stopped.

"Harry, what're you-?" Hermione started to ask.

"It's that voice again. Shut up a minute," replied Harry. We complied and listened ourselves. I heard nothing, and Harry said, "Listen." After another long moment of not hearing any voice, Harry took off at a run, declaring, "This way!"

We ran after, with Harry stopping to listen periodically and shushing any questions from us. Finally, he declared in a horrified tone, "It's going to kill someone!" He sprinted after this voice only he could hear, eventually leading us to a corridor where huge bold letters had been painted on one of the walls.

"THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE."

"What's that thing hanging underneath?" asked Ron.

We approached to investigate, Harry nearly slipping in a puddle of water in the corridor. Hanging by her tail was Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, still as the grave.

"Let's get out of here," said Ron after a moment.

"Shouldn't we try and help?" asked Harry, clearly having no real idea how to help.

Ron replied, "Trust me, we don't want to be found here."

As if on cue, crowds of students freshly released from the Halloween feast poured into the corridor from both sides. The five4 of us stood in the center next to the menacing message and the dead cat. It didn't look good at all.

If there was one thing I absolutely did not expect to be rescued by, it was Draco Malfoy's obsessive need to make everything about himself. Draco muscled his way to the front of the crowd and called out triumphantly, "Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, mudbloods!"

Filch arrived on the scene a moment later, however, ruining Draco's excellent distraction by noticing the five of us clumped around Mrs. Norris. "My cat! My cat! What's happened to Mrs. Norris? You! You!" Filch stared straight at Harry, identifying him as the ring leader. "You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll-"

"Argus!" snapped Dumbledore upon arriving on the scene, saving Filch's life by deflating his threats with that one word. "Come with me, Argus. You five, too."

"My office is nearest, Headmaster," interjected Gilderoy Lockheart, who'd shown up at some point. "Just upstairs. Please, feel free-"

"Thank you, Gilderoy," said Dumbledore quickly. He then scooped up Mrs. Norris and led the way out of the crowd. The five of us, Filch, Lockheart, McGonagall, and Snape followed. Dumbledore set Mrs. Norris on the desk for examination. McGonagall was assisting while Lockheart made arrogant pronouncements to make himself feel important.

After a long while with no one important saying a word, Dumbledore announced, "She's not dead, Argus."

"Not dead?" asked Fich, suppressing his sobs of grief to hear the old wizard out. "But why's she all... stiff and frozen?"

Dumbledore replied gravely, "She has been petrified, but how, I cannot say."

"Ask him!" yelled Filch, rounding again on Harry.

"No second year could have done this," said Dumbledore firmly. "It would take dark magic of the most advanced-"

Filch interrupted, rage filled eyes still locked on Harry. "He did it! He did it! You saw what he wrote on the wall! He found- in my office- he knows I'm a- I'm a- I'm a squib!"

"I never touched Mrs. Norris, and I don't even know what a squib is," declared Harry.

Filch shot back, "Rubbish! He saw my Kwikspell letter!"

"If I might speak, Headmaster," said Snape, "Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Halloween feast?"

Snape, of course, knew the answer. The man was a mind reader and only Sloth and I had been trained to keep him out. This was just his way of moving the conversation along. For all he was acting the part of hating Harry, he was clearly giving him an opening to explain his alibi. We took the opportunity, explaining about the deathday party, and all the ghosts that could verify our story.

"But why not join the feast afterward?" prompted Snape. "Why go up to that corridor?"

"Because... because..." Harry looked like he was going to try to lie. To Snape and Dumbledore. Who could both read his mind. He caught sight of the incredulous look on my face, realized the absurdity and sighed. "I was following a voice. It was talking like it was going to kill someone. It was the same voice I heard in Professor Lockheart's office."

"And did the rest of you hear this so-called voice?" asked Professor Snape. We all reluctantly shook our heads.

"They boy's defense is he's gone mad?" demanded Filch, incredulously. "My cat has been petrified! I want to see some punishment!"

"Innocent until proven guilty, Argus," said Dumbledore after staring hard at Harry for a long moment. "We will be able to cure her. Professor Sprout recently managed to procure some mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full size, I will have a potion made that will revive Mrs. Norris."

"I'll make it," declared Lockheart, reminding us all he was in the room. "I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep."

"Excuse me, but I believe I am the potions master at this school," retorted Snape.

"You may go," Dumbledore dismissed the five of us.

Once the five of us were safely away, we found an empty classroom to talk in.

"Do you think they believed me about the voice?"

"Filch certainly didn't," noted Sloth.

"You believe me, don't you?" asked Harry looking around.

I nodded firmly with the others and said, "I'll bet it's like the thestrals. You meet whatever requirement you need to have and we don't."

"And obviously Professor Dumbledore knows you really heard it. He and Snape will have both seen it in your mind," added Hermione.

"What was that writing on the wall about?" mused Harry. "'The Chamber of Secrets has been opened.' What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know," said Ron, "it sort of rings a bell. I think someone told me a story about a secret chamber at Hogwarts once. Might've been Bill."

"And what on earth's a squib?" asked Harry.

Ron laughed and covered his mouth guiltily. "Well, it's not funny, really. But as it's Filch... A squib is someone who was born into a wizarding family, but hasn't got any magic powers. Kind of the opposite of muggleborn wizards, but squibs are quite unusual. If Filch's trying to learn magic from a Kwikspell course, I reckon he musts be a squib. It would explain a lot, like why he hates students so much. He's bitter."

"Would that work?" I asked, intrigued. "Could me and Sloth develop actual magic using Kwikspell courses?"

"Not in a million years," said Ron. "They're really for people like Neville. People who've got magic, but are just rubbish at it. Squibs do them a lot anyway though. Keep hoping it'll turn out they really had magic after all."

"Life is unfair," I complained before we all headed back to our dorms.

* * *

The attack on Mrs. Norris consumed the rumor mill utterly, which meant that no one was talking about the incident in the staircase to the girls' dormitory anymore. My own troubles over, I turned my attention to the troubles of others, gradually hatching a plan crazy enough that I ought to have Sloth look it over before I presented it to anyone else.

"I want to bring Nearly Headless Nick back to life, then decapitate him properly," I said while we were sitting outside, getting Loki some exercise.

"Why do you want to do that?" asked Sloth.

"I was talking to the Grey Lady, the Ravenclaw ghost, about what happened at Nick's deathday party. Apparently, he's been trying to join the Headless hunt, but they keep rejecting him because the executioner who killed him used a blunt axe and left his head still technically attached on one side."

"And you think he'll be willing to go through dying again for his chance to join? They didn't seem like particularly nice people when they came to the party. I don't know why he wants to join their club."

"True enough," I agreed. "Still, I figure he ought ot get to decide for himself."

"It seems pretty risky. It's not like we really understand how ghosts work. We might kill him and he won't come back at all."

"And we'll never know without the experiment."

"That's what's different," said Sloth, snapping her fingers. "My father ran experiments on people too. The difference is you're willing to wait however long it takes to find volunteers." She kissed me.

"Luna caught an obvious flaw in my last plan. I think I'll run this by her too. Once we're a go, I figure we should bring Harry, Ron, and Hermione in. If Voldemort does find out how to get a homunculus body, I want them to know how to kill him."

* * *

"Have you found the Resurrection Stone?" asked Luna after I presented my plan to raise and re-kill the Gryffindor ghost. We were alone in the common room. All the other Ravelcaws had gone to bed.

"What's the Resurrection Stone?" I asked.

"It's one of the Deathly Hallows," replied Luna.

"And those are?" I asked when it was clear she wasn't going to elaborate without a prompt.

"They're three powerful magic artifacts forged by Death himself. The Elder Wand, which can't be bested in a duel, the Cloak of Invisibility, which hides its wearer even from Death, and the Resurrection Stone, which calls the dead back to the land of the living."

"No. I haven't found anything like that. I'm planning on making Nick a new body using alchemy, then attaching his soul to it. Voldemort tried doing the same thing last year to resurrect himself."

"Oh, in that case, it seems like it would work. You're better at making people than you are at wands, right?"

"Much better," I affirmed.

* * *

"You're serious?" asked Nearly Headless Nick.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Sloth, Nick, and I were all inside an unused classroom in one of the dungeons.

"I won't pretend there aren't risks," I said. "I've never tired a soul attachment using a ghost before. And once you're back alive, I don't know what we have to do to ensure you become a ghost again on your death."

"A wizard can choose to leave behind an imprint in this world rather than pass on," said Nick. "Its not as though I don't have experience in that area."

"You might not come back as a wizard," warned Sloth. "We don't know what makes someone a wizard, so there's a chance you'll come back to life as a muggle."

"Even if it is Nearly Headless Nick-" started Ron.

"Sir Nicholas," if you please," corrected the ghost.

"Even if it is him," continued Ron, "I don't think people are going to be understanding if they find a fresh corpse in the school. Especially after what happened to Mrs. Norris."

"Good news," I said. "When killed this way, homunculus bodies melt into a puddle of red water."

"You've done this a lot before?" asked Harry, nervously.

"No," I replied. "This would be my first time seeing the process firsthand. That said, the information is reliable."

"There's one more concern," said Sloth. "The method we're going to use requires your human remains and they can only be used once. If we botch the execution again..."

"Then we use a guillotine," said Hermione, drawing stares. "Hey, this whole plan is crazy, but if we're going to go through with this, well, that is what they were designed for."

"When do we get started?" asked Sir Nicholas. "Oh, won't Sir Patrick be surprised to see my head flying through his office window..."

* * *

Sloth used floo powder and her invisibility cloak to visit Sir Nicholas' grave and retrieve a bone. Fortunately, he'd been buried in a proper marked grave after his execution. I had Ron scrounge up the base elements for the human transmutation. He wasn't ready to do the alchemy himself, but he could manage the shopping list.

Harry was assigned to impress on Sir Nicholas the importance of secrecy. If Voldemort got wind of what we were doing, or worse, how, it would be a disaster. Luna and Hermione were setting up the execution grounds. Nobody would suspect Hermione of rule breaking, so she could give almost any excuse if caught. Luna could, hopefully, get the whole apparatus safely and thoroughly tested.

As for me, I retrieved the needed red stones and went over my notes on human alchemy. I'd have to be alone for most of this, since we couldn't risk unshielded minds seeing any of the arrays.

The preparations were quick, and the very next night, all was in readiness. The seven of us gathered in an unoccupied part of the dungeons, aided by Harry's, Sloth's, and my invisibility cloaks.

"Is there a reason you brought Scabbers, Ron?" I asked.

"It's not my fault," complained Ron, miserably. "He just got all clingy all of a sudden."

"Just keep him under control," I said. "This is a delicate enough procedure without our pets getting underfoot. That's why I left Loki asleep back in the dorms."

"I know, I know," said Ron. "Can we please just get on with it? We're alone now, but for all we know Peeves could show up, and that'd be worse than anything Scabbers could do."

"Actually," said Sir Nicholas proudly, "I suggested to Peeves that tonight would be an excellent time to put shoe polish on all the telescopes in the astronomy tower."

"Brilliant," said Harry.

"Still, we really shouldn't waste any time," added Hermione. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Absolutely, my dear," affirmed Nick. "And thank you for all your efforts to make sure it's clean this time around."

"Last chance to back out," I said, pulling a soul coin out of my pocket. With a gesture, I marred the array on the back and dislodged the red stone fragment, leaving only the blood seal. Pressing the coin into Nearly Headless Nick's spectral form, I activated the seal. Blue light poured from the seal, and Nearly Headless Nick evaporated into nothingness. The humans gasped.

"Now, this is peculiar," came the voice of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington from the coin.

"Step one was a success," I announced. "Harry, you hold this, and whatever you do, don't break the seal."

"Right," said Harry, taking the coin gingerly.

I stepped into the next room and heard Sloth reminding the others, "This next part is secret and dangerous. If you don't want Voldemort back, and if you don't want to be dismembered by the alchemy Greed's working with, stay out."

In the center of the room were the ingredients Ron had measured out. I went over them again just to be sure, then I stomped my foot, causing a human transmutation array to carve itself into the stone. Tossing a small chip from the bone Sloth retrieved onto the pile in the center, I got to my knees and pressed my palms to the transmutation circle.

Blue light poured from the array and the inert matter in the center began to move and distort. And suddenly, I was once again before the Gate. The familiar stone double doors swung open, and all the knowledge of the universe once again poured through me. Truth, the Elric brothers had called it. I let it wash over me as the shadowy hands of the Gate Children clawed at my flesh and ripped off my right hand. It didn't matter. What mattered was that there was a way to gain access to the magic of this world. I was on the edge of comprehending it when the shadowy limbs withdrew and the Gate slammed shut. I didn't know what the way was, but the fact that it was possible was heartening in and of itself.

Back in the room, I examined my newly formed homunculus as I grew a new hand. Like all of us, it had been born a misshapen pile of bloody organs and twisted bones. I quickly found its oroboros mark as my creation struggled to breathe.

Stomping and undrawing the human transmutation array, I called for Harry to enter. He nearly threw up on sighting the creature I'd made. Ron and Hermione braced him, even though they weren't doing much better themselves. Luna handled it the best, since Sloth had to stay outside with the bone until the homunculus stabilized.

Harry handed over Sir Nicholas' soul coin, and I pressed it to the oroboros mark. "This part is going to hurt," I warned him, before attaching his soul to the homunculus body. Fortunately, I knew from experience it would take some time before he figured out how to scream.

"Red stones," I ordered, snapping my fingers. Luna quickly handed me the basket, and I began feeding Nick the red stones that would stabilize his body into a human form. When Nick's features emerged, and he stood up, strong, healthy, and alive, with an oroboros mark on the side of his neck where he'd previously had the flap of skin that earned him his nickname, I asked, "How do you feel?"

"Much better than I did a moment ago," he huffed. "I think that was actually more painful than forty five hits to the neck with a blunt axe."

"Are you really alive?" asked Harry in wonder.

"I do seem to be," noted Sir Nicholas happily.

"Why aren't you naked?" asked Luna.

"I beg your pardon?" said Sir Nicholas.

"I mean, did he resurrect your clothes too?" asked Luna. "I didn't think you were wearing so much black."

"It's a weird side effect of the process," I explained. "Speaking of which, though, you should change into the clothes Luna got for you. We'll meet you outside."

"You really can raise the dead with alchemy," marveled Ron as we gave Nick some privacy.

"I told you the Philosopher's Stone was wasted doing something as trivial as making gold," I said proudly.

"Next lesson, how to kill a homunculus," said Sloth. "If Voldemort does ever manage the same thing, you'll need to know." Tapping her wand on the ground, a flamel array drew itself. "Red stones in its body allow a homunculus to regenerate from any injury. This array forces those stones out of the homunculus' body."

Sir Nicholas emerged in an outfit quite similar to the ones he usually appeared in. "I believe I'm prepared to face the guillotine."

"Ron, would you do the honors?" I offered with a gesture to the array.

"First I need you here for a minute," said Ron, gesturing at the circle. "This part might hurt too."

Ron touched the flamel array and it shone with golden light. Sir Nicholas fell to his knees and regurgitated a handful of red stones onto the floor, where they melted.

"Why," demanded Sir Nicholas as he got to his feet, "didn't we do that part before I changed clothes?"

"Will someone loan him a wand so he can clean up?" I suggested, and Harry handed over his.

Sir Nicholas waived Harry's wand over his body and the stains vanished. Harry retrieved the wand again.

"You're definitely still a wizard," noted Sloth. "Means homunculi can be wizards. Also, you might actually get a chance to come back as a ghost."

"Harry, would you do the honors?" asked Sir Nicholas as he set his head inside the guillotine.

"Me?" asked Harry, blanching. "Maybe someone else should do it. I've never done anything like this before. I- I don't want to make a mistake."

"Don't look at me," said Ron. "I already made him puke all over himself."

"I made the guillotine," said Hermione. "Isn't that enough?"

"Why don't we just give Sir Nicholas the rope?" suggested Luna.

"That would make timing my new last words easier," said Sir Nicholas, scratching his chin. "All right, bring it here."

Harry handed him the rope with a forced smile. Nick took it and shook Harry's hand, making Harry even more uncomfortable.

"Take notes you old incompetent!" yelled Sir Nicholas suddenly. "This is how you take off a head!"

He tugged the rope, and the blade fell. Sloth held out the bone towards Sir Nicholas. It was a clean cut, and we saw the bone disintegrate in Sloth's hand. We all held our breath as Sir Nicholas' body melted into a puddle of red water on the bench, and another in the basket. As flesh and bone vanished, we strained our eyes to see ephemera.

Faintly translucent, we six were the first to behold the new Gryffindor ghost, Headless Nick.

"It worked!" exclaimed Nick's head from teh basket. His body grabbed it out and held it up to us. "I can't thank you enough. All of you. I never imagined I'd get a chance like this. 'Don't meet the requirements.' Ha! I'll show him!"

"Just not a word about the how," I emphasized.

"I would sooner die than betray your trust," said Nick, bowing as he held his head level.

"We're serous," said Sloth.

"As I said, I am deeply grateful to you all. Not one word on the how. That'll be fun holding that over Sir Patrick's head," Nick mused aand floated off through the ceiling.

"I can't believe that is what's going to let me see thestrals," said Hermione after a long, awkward silence.

I simply clapped my hands and deconstructed the guillotine, dealing with the evidence.

"At least you were safe for it," offered Harry.

"And he was happy about it," said Luna.

"I hope it's everything he wanted," said Sloth.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Re-executing Nearly Headless Nick was one of the scenes I wanted to include when I started in on this story. Meanwhile, note what Scabbers did and did not see. Overlooking the rat here will come back to bite our heroes.


	13. Chapter 18: Studying Slytherin's Serpent

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 18) Studying Slytherin's Serpent  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

I wasn't particularly concerned about the attack on Mrs. Norris. Threatening messages were one thing, but so far, only a cat had been attacked, nonfatally. Given how easy it would have been to finish the job, I doubted that the culprit had enough of a killer instinct to do any lasting harm.

When Hermione dragged Harry and Ron to see me and Sloth where we were working on our homework, I was surprised to hear her announce, "We think Malfoy is the Heir of Slytherin, and we need your help to prove it."

"What?" I asked.

"We think he's the one that sicked Slytherin's monster on Mrs. Norris and wrote that message," explained Harry.

"Slytherin's monster?" asked Sloth, clearly as lost as I was.

"Turns out Binns was good for something," said Ron, referring to the ghost teacher of History of Magic. "He told us the story of the Chamber of Secrets."

"Here," said Hermione, handing over a piece of parchment. "I took notes."

"Of course you did," said Ron, rolling his eyes.

Sloth and I leaned close and read the parchment together. When it was done, I said, "So, Salazar Slytherin got into an argument with the other three founders and left the school. He didn't think muggleborns could be trusted, since muggles were persecuting witches at the time. In anticipation of an 'I told you so' moment, he left some sort of monster in a hidden chamber in the school that he or his heir could use to defend the school from treasonous muggleborns."

"That's the legend," said Hermione. "We think the Malfoys might be Slytherin's descendants."

"How do me and Greed fit in?" asked Sloth.

"You're metamorphmagi," said Ron. "You could impersonate two of the Slytherins and get Malfoy to confess."

"How?" I asked. "Do you think he just struts around the Slytherin common room announcing he attacked Mrs. Norris? I know he's stupid, but that stupid? Any of the other Slytherins could turn him in to Filch."

"Crabe and Goyle practically never leave his side," noted Harry. "They probably already know, so he'd talk to them."

"Please," begged Ron. "If you don't do this, Hermione's going to make us use polyjuice."

"Polyjuice?" I asked, intrigued. "You mean that potion that turns you into someone else? Hm."

"What are you thinking?" asked Harry.

"Well, this is a terrible plan," I said, "but I wonder if we'd be able to do magic under Polyjuice if we turned into wizards."

"Can't you focus?" demanded Hermione. "Even if it isn't Malfoy, his family's got connections to the sort of dark arts that whoever's doing this must have. Malfoy probably knows something at least. And whoever it is is threatening muggleborns. I want to know who it is, and I don't know why you don't."

"I'll do it," said Sloth. "It is a bad plan, but if it'll make you feel better..." A line of blue light ran from her toes to the top of her head as she turned into Crabe.

"Likewise," I said, turning into Goyle.

"You have a plan to get the real ones out of the way while we work, right?" asked Sloth in Crabe's voice.

"Of course we do," said Hermione.

"We do?" asked Ron, only to be elbowed in the ribs by Hermione.

"Well, that's comforting," I said. "Shall we go?"

"Wait," demanded Harry. "You aren't going like that, are you?"

"Like what?" I asked.

"Crabe and Goyle don't talk like that, and you're walking all wrong," clarified Harry.

So, we submitted to some acting coaching from Harry before heading off to find Draco in the Slytherin common room. Sloth had done some fairly extensive scouting of hte school and was able to lead us to the blank wall in the dungeons that led to the Slytherin common room. Taking my hand, Sloth walked through the well, pulling me in with her. Fortunately, none of the other Slytherins saw us come in.

Looking around for Draco, he wasn't in, so to pass the time, we went up to the dorm to snoop through his stuff. There were some letters from his father refusing to answer questions about the Chamber of Secrets, and telling Draco to keep his head down and let hte Heir get on with purging the school of "mudblood filth". It clearly wasn't Draco. Sloth and I quickly left the Slytherin dorms and got back into our regular appearances.

"Draco doesn't know anything," said Sloth, when we found Hermione, Ron, and Harry again. "We found some letters in his dorm. He's trying, unsuccessfully, to worm information out of Lucius Malfoy."

"Can we still brew that Polyjuice anyway?" I asked, hopefully.

"So, it's really not Malfoy," repeated Ron. "Then who could it be?"

"I don't know," I said, "but we were lucky Malfoy doesn't destroy or encrypt his correspondences, or we wouldn't have learned this much."

"Malfoy's looking into the Chamber," noted Sloth. "He might find out more than we can with his connections. Just because he doesn't know now doesn't mean he won't know later."

"As for the polyjuice," said Hermione, "the recipe's in a book called Moste Potente Potions, and it's bound to be in the restricted section of the library. That's why we asked for your help first."

"I don't think you want to tell any of the teachers what you really want to try," guessed Harry.

"I think that if we made it sound as though we were just interested in the theory, we might stand a chance," said Hermione.

"Oh come on," said Ron. "No teacher's going to fall for that. They'd have to be really thick."

* * *

Manipulating Professor Lockheart proved even easier than expected. Stroking his ego a bit and he signed the note we provided without even reading it. Madam Pince didn't like handing over the book, but she did it.

I tapped the book with the red stone affixed to the end of my wand and tapped the stone to my temple, absorbing the book's contents into my mind. Touching my wand to Sloth's back, over her oroboros mark, I imprinted the knowledge on her mind as well. As I did so, I handed the book over to Hermione, who'd need to assimilate its contents the old fashioned way. She, in turn, led us to an out of order girl's bathroom, the one haunted by Moaning Myrtle.

"Why are we talking here?" asked Ron.

"Because it's the last place anyone in their right minds would go, so we're guaranteed some privacy," said Hermione.

"Myrtle's right there," noted Sloth, pointing to a bathroom stall with sobbing coming out of it.

"Is she still crying over what Peeves did?" I asked, worriedly.

"Just about anything sets her off," said Hermione, coldly. "You'll know she's really upset when she floods the place like she did on Halloween."

"That's what that puddle in the hall was," I said. "Do you think she saw what happened?"

"She didn't. We asked," replied Harry.

"Okay, so, the potion," said Hermione, finding the page.

"Most of the ingredients are pretty common," I said. "We'll need to make another floo powder trip to pick up some bicorn horn and boomslang skin."

"And we'll need some bits of the person we're turning into," added Sloth. "Do you mind if we use a couple hairs from you guys?"

"Just don't do anything to get us in trouble while you're us," said Ron.

"It looks like it'll take about a month to brew," noted Hermione. "We;ll need to keep it hidden."

"We have a place," I said. 

* * *

The five of us gathered at the Quidditch field and joined hands in a circle. Sloth used her powers to let us sink through the ground and emerge into our hidden lab. Sloth tapped her wand to one of the transmutation circles on the wall, and hundreds of circles began glowing with a faint, blue light, illuminating the lab.

I made a gesture with my wand toward the bedroom, and the wizard photos on the walls were wrapped in blue alchemic light and swept themselves into a drawer on the wall, which then slid in and vanished seamlessly, becoming part of the wall.

"What was that?" asked Harry.

"Something private," I said. Then, indicating another door, "That area's filled with toxic gasses. Don't go in there without protection and supervision."

"This doesn't look like part of the school at all," noted Ron.

"It isn't," said Sloth. "Greed made it when we first came to the school. We needed someplace private to make these." She held up her wand and indicated the crystal affixed to the tip. "They're the only thing that lets our alchemy keep up with you wizards."

"Your own chamber of secrets," noted Hermione. "I'm sure no one'll catch us brewing polyjuice in here."

"This alcove is for potions," I said, indicating a small area with a cauldron inside a transmutation circle with a red stone on a far corner of the table. Moving the stone to its correct position in the array, it glowed with red alchemic light and a flame ignited beneath the cauldron.

"It'll be a couple of weeks before we need the boomslang skin and bicorn horn," noted Hermione as we all got started measuring out the initial ingredients.

* * *

I had the remaining ingredients down in the lab before the season's first Quidditch match. Gryffindor versus Slytherin. As usual, Sloth and I were cheering for Gryffindor for Harry's sake. Our houses were actually behind us on that. The Slytherin team's top of the line broomsticks combined with their behavior last year when they took advantage of the attack on Harry by Quirrell to run up the score left most of the school hoping to see them taken down a peg.

The seeker's part of the game typically involves him flying above the action and staring really hard down at the field. It was generally the least interesting part of the game to watch. This time was different. A bludger had locked on to Harry and refused to give up on him no matter how many times he dodged the enchanted ball, or how many times the beaters, Fred and George Weasley, tried to knock the bludger toward the Slytherin players with their bats.

After a brief time out and stategy meeting by the Gryffindors, Harry was apparently left to deal with the bludger alone. Without a bat, Harry was forced to resort to a series of high speed manuvers and hairpoint dodges to evade the bludger. He couldn't keep it up forever,, and the ball hit him hard enough that the extraordinarily durable, wizard bones in his arm snapped, causing it to hang limp and useless as he dove badly at Draco Malfoy.

Draco dodged aside and Harry crashed into the ground, grasping the game winning Golden Snitch. Lockheart was the first to reach Harry after he fell unconscious. The rest of us reached him just in time to see Gilderoy Lockheart cast a spell on Harry's broken arm that made all the bones in it disappear.

Lockheart was saying, "Ah, yes, well, that can sometimes happen. But the point is, the bones are no longer broken. That's the thing to bear in mind."

"I'm sorry," I said as I arrived, interrupting Lockheart's hand waving. "Broken bones, I could've fixed right here. Missing parts... we'll need to hope Madam Pomfrey has something. Anything I could try at this point would be... radical."

Fortunately, Madam Pomfrey had a foul tasting potion called Skele-gro explicitly for the purpose of regrowing bones. She mentioned the process would be painful, but at least it would be quick. He'd have to stay overnight, but he'd be healed by breakfast. 

* * *

The next day, everything changed. Collin Creevy, the Gryffindor first year who was always following Harry around and taking pictures was attacked. Petrified, the same as Mrs. Norris had been. Sloth snuck a peek at his bed when we went to visit Harry upon his own discharge from the hospital wing and confirmed the rumors.

Harry quickly ushered us out and into an empty classroom where he informed us, "Dobby came to visit me in the middle of the night."

House elves were apparently a breed of short, humanoid magical creatures that are enslaved to a particular wizarding family, and can only be freed when their master gives them clothes. Otherwise, they are powerfully compelled to obey.

The family Dobby served was involved with this Chamber of Secrets business, and Dobby had strained his invisible bonds to the breaking point trying to keep Harry out of this. Among other things, that told us Harry wasn't the explicit target of the plot, since otherwise, Dobby wouldn't have had enough slack to try to get Harry away from the school.

Dobby had confessed to sealing the train platform barrier to keep Harry off the Hogwarts express at hte start of the year, and to tampering with the bludger that had broken his arm in the hopes that he would be sent home injured. Harry had managed to worm out of Dobby the additional detail that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened before.

When Harry had finished, I moved to leave.

"Where are you going?" asked Ron.

"Let me know if you make any progress figuring out who's doing this," I replied. "And if you need me, I'll help however I can. But right now, I think I can be of the most help trying to get Collin back on his feet."

* * *

I was trained in agricultural alchemy, and could grow plants from seeds to full maturity in seconds. I'd done it many times before. There were a few catches. I'd only ever used it on mundane plants, and I had no way of knowing how it might impact the usefulness of the resulting plants in a potion. Secondly, like with all alchemy, I needed to really understand the life cycle of the plant inside and out, with every structure and nutritional uptake pathway, before I could do more than just damage the plant beyond repair. More information than was actually in our standard Herbology textbooks.

For those reasons, I didn't want to approach Professor Sprout, who might get her hopes up needlessly, and who's expertise was needed growing her batch of mandrakes conventionally, which would still be needed if my plan failed. Instead, I approached Neville Longbottom, who's grades in Herbology were competitive with me and Hermione, and who was from an old wizard family and might have more hands on experience dealing with magical plants.

"You need my help?" asked Neville, confused.

"That's right," I said. "I have an herbology project I'm working on that might revive Collin, but I need someone who knows more than I do about mandrakes."

"Isn't Professor Sprout already growing the mandrakes Collin needs?" asked Neville.

"Hers won't be done until the end of the school year. If my plan works, Collin could be up and moving tonight, and maybe he can identify his attacker."

The possibility of ending the attacks galvanized Neville, who asked, "What's your plan?"

I explained my plan to rapidly grow mandrakes to maturity using alchemy, and the kind of detailed information I would need ot do it.

"If you think you can do this, come on," said Neville. He brought me to the library, tracked down a handful of herbology books, and settled us down to talk.

Neville was even more brilliant at Herbology than I'd hoped. He'd worked with a lot of magical plants at home and was able to identify specific growth phases in mandrakes that would benefit from alchemy induced acceleration, and stages that would need to be processed in real time due to the nature of this particular plant. He worked out details from first principles and experience that would've taken me months of trial and error working alone.

Borrowing a couple pairs of earmuffs from the greenhouse, Neville and I joined hands and descended through the ground of the Quidditch field and emerged in my laboratory. My method involved opening the ground using the arrays on my shoes and resealing it after us. It wasn't as stealthy or subtle as Sloth's method, but it did the job.

We worked for two hours in absolute silence. Starting with seeds, I would accelerate their growth in short spurts, then Neville would check their progress. They needed to be watered, repotted, fertilized, and assessed frequently, but in the end, we'd produced a dozen full grown mandrakes.

I'd read the details on the restorative draught before coming down here to work. Still wearing our earmuffs, Nevile and I chopped the mandrakes up and started stewing them. Finally, with the last of the deadly plants stewing, and their screams silenced, we removed our earmuffs.

"We should test the draught on Mrs. Norris first," I said. "If anything goes wrong, better her than Collin."

"Who do you think's doing all this?" asked Neville.

"I don't know," I admitted, "but I intend to find out."

The two of us went to the hospital wing with a large bottle filled with the restorative draught. When Madam Pomfrey asked why we were there, I paused to gather my thoughts, since the details of my plan to quick grow the mandrakes were very technical, and I didn't want her dismissing the possibility that it had worked just because I was pretending to be twelve.

Neville sensed my hesitation and spoke up. "I wrote to my gran about what happened to Collin, and she sent me this old bottle of mandrake draught from our cellar. I don't know if it's still good, but..."

Neville's lie helped more than any half truth I could come up with would have, as Madam Pomfrey thanked Neville and tested the draught on Mrs. Norris, successfully reviving Filch's cat. She let us see Collin as she administered the draught to him.

"Collin," asked Neville, "are you okay?"

"Neville?" asked Collin. "I think so. What happened? The last thing I remember was this pair of yellow, slitted eyes."

"You've been petrified, Collin," I said. "Just like Mrs. Norris. Can you remember anything else about how it happened?"

"I think I took a picture," said Collin. "Where's my camera?"

"Harry said he saw Dumbledore checking it," I replied. "Whatever petrified you melted the film too."

* * *

Neville agreed to pass along Collin's testimony to his fellow Gryffindors I let him know he didn't need to keep secrets from Harry, Ron, and Hermione, since they already knew about my lab and my abilities. Then I headed out to find Sloth. I found her outside running Loki around in circles to get some exercise.

"How'd the mandrake draught work out?" asked Sloth as I approached.

"Wouldn't have gone half so well without Neville," I said. "As things went, Collin's cured. All he remembers was a pair of yellow, slitted eyes."

"More than we had to go on before," said Sloth. "So it definitely is some sort of creature. Incidentally, they posted an announcement for a dueling club. We should sign up. Learn hw to do a formal wizard duel."

"Sounds like fun," I agreed. "Thanks for keeping an eye on Loki while I was working on the mandrakes with Neville."

"I liked playing with Loki," said Sloth. "He's such a good dog." Sloth ruffled his ears.

"He is," I agreed, patting Loki's flank.

* * *

That evening, back in the Ravenclaw dormitory, I found Luna and told her what Collin said.

"Slitted eyes," mused Luna. "That narrows it down a lot. Limit it to magical creatures with a lifespan over a thousand years, since it's supposed to be from the founders' time. And with the power of petrification."

"Any specific suspect creatures?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, the library isn't really organized by any of those clues."

"We'll figure it out," I affirmed. "We have one other clue. Harry's heard the Chamber of Secrets has been opened once before."

"If we can find out more details about last time, we might be able to narrow it down the rest of the way."

"We'll work on it together. Hermione knows the library better than anyone. Harry's good at putting clues together. Actually, why don't we all head down to the library together after the dueling club meeting?"

"Dueling club?" asked Luna.

"Sloth saw the posting for it. You should come too."

* * *

Luna and I met up with Sloth, and the three of us went down to the Great Hall, that had been set up for the dueling lessons. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville were already there, chatting about who would be teaching.

"Someone told me Flitwick was a dueling champion when he was young. Maybe it'll be him," speculated Hermione.

"As long as it's not-ugh!" Harry groaned as Professor Lockheart and Snape stepped in.

Lockheart announced, "Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent!

"Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little dueling club to train you in case you ever need to defend yourselves, as I myself have done on countless occasions. For full details, see my published works.

"Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape. He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about dueling himself, and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry. You'll still have your potions master when I'm through with him. Never fear!"

I overheard Ron muttering, "Wouldn't it be good if they finished each other off?"

Lockheart and Snape went to opposite ends of the stage that had been set up and bowed, Lockheart much deeper than Snape, who didn't take his eyes off his opponent. Then they raised their wands toward one another.

Lockheart explained, "As you see, we are holding our wands in the accepted combat position. On the count of three, we will cast our first spells. Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course."

"I wouldn't bet on that," muttered Harry under his breath while the combatants counted.

On three, Snape's wand lanced out and a bolt of red light shot at Lockheart as he called out, "Expelliarmus!" Lockheart flew backward from the spell's impact and impacted the far wall.

"Do you think he's alright?" asked Hermione.

"Who cares?" replied Harry and Ron together.

Lockheart, displaying the usual wizard enhanced durability, got to his feet saying, "Well, there you have it. That was a disarming charm. As you see, I've lost my wand." A student picked up Lockheart's dropped wand and returned it to him. "Ah, thank you Miss Brown. Yes, an excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind my saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you, it would have been only too easy. However, I felt it would be instructive to let them see.

"Enough demonstrating! I'm going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me."

I ended up facing Neville. He smiled weakly at me and I gave him a nod as we got into position.

Lockheart called out, "Face your partners! And bow! Wands at the ready! When I count to three, cast your charms to disarm your opponents. Only to disarm them. We don't want any accidents. One, two, three!"

The transmutation circle inscribed along my wand flared with blue light for an instant as Neville and I both shouted, "Expeliarmus!" simultaneously. The red bolt from his wand crossed paths with the blue bolt from mine as both attacks hit home. The two of us were blasted backwards, our wands flying from our hands and our bodies ending up flat on our backs with the wind knocked out of us. We'd both more or less managed to duplicate Snape's spell on our first try.

Snape called out, "Finite Incantem!" and negated all active spells. From the look of the crowd, Neville and I must've been the only ones following directions. Harry and Draco had traded curses and charms of various descriptions. Hermione was in a headlock at the hands of her Slytherin opponent Millicent Bulstrode.

Harry leapt forward to pull Millicent off a Hermione that was whimpering in pain. I lent some muscle to the job, since she was a lot bigger than Harry, Hermione, or myself. Lockheart was trying to sort out the aftermath of the duels.

"I think I'd better teach you how to block unfriendly spells. Let's have a volunteer pair. Longbottom and Oren, how about you?"

"A bad idea, Professor Lockheart," said Snape. "Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Oren up to the hospital wing in a matchbox. How about Malfoy and Potter?"

Neville looked embarrassed. I was just annoyed. We'd been the ones following instructions. And Neville certainly didn't need another blow to his confidence wiping away that good first round between us.

Lockheart just followed Snape's lead, declaring, "Excellent idea! Now, Harry, when Draco points his wand at you, you do this." Halfway through his gesture, Lockheart's wand slipped out of his hand and dropped to the floor. "Whoops. My wand is a little overexcited."

Harry tried to get proper instruction on blocking, but Lockheart was ignoring him. The duel was started anyway, and Draco's spell went off first.

"Serpensortia!" yelled Draco as a long, black snake burst from the tip of his wand, and fell to the floor between the two combatants. The snake looked agitated. Meanwhile, I was sighing at the equivalency violation involved. A living thing conjured out of nothing. It could be done with a red stone, but it was just about the most taxing thing possible. And that would be to duplicate a second year's spell.

"Don't move, Potter. I'll get rid of it," said Snape.

"Allow me!" yelled Lockheart, pointing his wand at the snake and launching it into the air toward one of the Hufflepuff students. When it landed, the snake was angry enough to bite the first person it saw.

Harry rushed toward the snake and started urgently hissing at it. In response, the snake calmed itself and laid down.

"What do you think you're playing at?" shouted the Hufflepuff boy at Harry. He then turned on his heel and stormed out of the Great Hall.

Everyone was staring at Harry, and a din of frightened muttering welled up from the other students. Ron grabbed Harry and rushed him out of the room. I followed after, with Sloth, Hermione, Luna, and Neville pulled along in the wake. We found an empty classroom before anyone explained anything.

"You're a parselmouth? Why didn't you tell us?" Ron asked Harry.

"I'm a what?" asked Harry before I could.

"A parselmouth!" said Ron overexcited. "You can talk to snakes!"

"I know," said Harry. "I mean, that's only the second time I've ever done it. I accidentally set a boa constrictor on my cousin Dudley at the zoo once. Long story. But it was telling me it had never seen Brazil and I sort of set it free without meaning to. That was before I knew I was a wizard."

"Did it make it to Brazil?" asked Luna, conversationally.

"I don't think so," said Harry. "The zoo probably recaptured it. Come to think of it, Brazil's a long ways away. I doubt it could get there without help."

"Harry, this is bad," said Ron.

"What's bad? I bet loads of people here can do it."

"Oh, no they can't," corrected Ron. "It's not a very common gift."

"Like being a metamorphmagus," I guessed. "Does this mean I can't learn to do it too?"

"Why would you want to?" snapped Ron.

"My name is Greed," I pointed out. "Why wouldn't you want to learn how to talk to snakes?"

"Right," added Harry. "If I hadn't told that snake not to attack Justin-"

"Oh, that's what you said to it?" confirmed Ron.

"What do you mean?" asked Harry. "You were there. You heard me."

"You were speaking parseltongue," said Neville. "It just sounded like you hissing."

"I spoke a different language?" asked Harry, confused. "But I didn't realize- How can I speak a language without knowing I can speak it?"

"Is it an actual language?" asked Sloth. "That is, do the sounds he makes when he talks convey the meaning, or is it a quasi-empathic communication power that he just happens to hiss while using?"

"It's a real language," confirmed Luna. :It's what snakes use to talk to each other."

"Then that means we can learn it, and Harry's just got the ability naturally," I said happily.

Ron, Hermione, and Neville were less than enthused.

"Do you want to tell me what's wrong with stopping a massive snake biting off Justin's head?" demanded Harry. "What does it matter how I did it as long as Justin doesn't have to join the Headless Hunt?"

"It matters because being able to talk to snakes was what Salazar Slytherin was famous for. That's why the symbol of Slytherin house is a serpent," explained Hermione.

Ron nodded, "Exactly, and now the whole school's going to think you're his great-great-great-great-grandson or something."

"But I'm not," said Harry with panic in his voice.

"You'll find that hard to prove," said Hermione. "He lived about a thousand years ago. For all we know, you could be."

"So what?" I asked. "We know Harry isn't behind the attacks. Sure, there'll be rumors, but there were rumors before when he led us to the first attack. I don't see what this changes."

"It changes everything," said Luna serenely. "Now we know Slytherin's monster is a snake. It's why Harry was the only one who heard the voice."

"Now we know what section of the library to start researching," I said, pleased. "And Harry, I do want to try and learn parseltongue. If its as rare as all that, having a language only we know has got to come in handy."

"So, you want all of us to start wandering around the school hissing at each other?" asked Harry. "You do realize I don't want to look like a budding dark lord, right?"

But I had Hermione convinced, and she was already musing about applying what she'd learned studying French to building a curriculum for learning snake speech. She wouldn't be easily distracted from the project.

* * *

In the library, the number of snakes with lifespans of over a thousand years turned out to be somewhat larger than anticipated, and none of them were a precise match for the evidence we had. The closest creature was the basilisk. It was known as the King of Serpents, lived hundreds of years, and in addition to its venomous fangs, attacked by locking eyes with its prey. There was even a mention of spiders fleeing from it, and Harry had noted unusual behavior by spiders at the first crime scene.

The only problem was that the basilisk's gaze killed,, rather than petrifying.

"Immature mandrakes don't kill with their screams," suggested Neville.

"You think it's only petrifying people because it's a thousand year old baby?" asked Ron, incredulously.

Neville blushed and fell silent.

"No, I think Neville might be right," said Harry. "The basilisk kills people by looking at them, but no one's dead because no one looked at it straight in the eye. Collin saw it through his camera. The basilisk burned up all the film inside it, but Collin just got petrified. And Mrs. Norris, remember all the water in the hall from Moaning Myrtle's bathroom? I bet you Mrs. Norris saw the reflection."

"In other words," I noted, "We've been really lucky no one's ended up dead. Coincidences like that can't keep happening indefinitely. Next time, it attacks..."

"So we kill it before it kills us," said Sloth firmly. "It says right here that a rooster's crow is fatal to it."

"How's it been getting around the school?" asked Ron. "It can't shape shift or turn invisible. A giant snake, someone would've seen."

"The pipes!" said Hermione. "Harry's been hearing its voice in the plumbing. We dismissed what sounded like the pipes hissing. We need to get a mirror to look around corners with. If we happen to see it that way, we'll end up petrified rather than dead."

"I've got a better idea," said Luna. Pulling out some parchment and a quill, she sketched out a set of plans. "With these, we'll also be safe if it's the basilisk that comes around a corner unexpectedly."

Looking over Luna's plans, I grabbed some things from my shoulder bag, piled them in the center of the table, and tapped my wand to them. The array along the wand glowed blue and the pile in the center of the table was transmuted into several pairs of goggles fitted with a set of mirrors and lenses roughly mimicking Collin's camera viewfinder. Luna immediately took a pair and put them on. The lenses magnified her eyes in a peculiar way and looked rather silly.

"I don't know about this," said Ron, holding a pair of goggles looking dubious.

"If it keeps us alive," noted Neville, putting his on.

"I think it's brilliant!" declared Harry, exchanging his glasses for the goggles. "No one'll think I'm Slytherin's heir wearing these."

* * *

Our theory about the basilisk wasn't universally accepted. Half the people we told thought we were trying to prank them. Most of the other half had competing theories about Slytherin's monster and protective charms that didn't involve wearing doofy looking goggles. As Ron had predicted, Harry's newly revealed parseltongue abilities combined with the suspicious circumstances of the first attack led many to conclude Harry was behind the attacks and dismissed our warnings on those grounds. Collin, the monster's first victim, put on the goggles before we finished explaining our theory, partly out of concern for his own safety, and partly as a show of faith and solidarity with Harry.

Hermione and I took turns playing wizard chess against Ron in a common area of the school the next day. A blizzard had hit and some classes had been canceled as a result. My alchemy empowered chessmen carved to resemble Amestrian soldiers performed admirably against Ron's battered, veteran chess set. I still lost, but I and my chessmen were gaining experience.

Harry'd been sent off to talk to Hagrid about the school roosters and setting them up as a proactive defense against the basilisk. While he was out, he wanted to find Justin and explain that he had been telling the snake to stop.

"There's been another attack," declared Sloth as she burst in. "Justin and Headless Nick were both petrified. Neville gave them some mandrake draught in the infirmary. It looks like Justin met its gaze while looking through Nick. Nick got the full blast, but he was already dead.

"Something's wrong," I mused. "This can't just be another coincidence. If it's a basilisk, why hasn't anyone been killed? Even if its gaze got interrupted somehow, basilisks have venomous fangs."

"Did either of them see anything new?" asked Hermione.

"No," replied Sloth. "Just the same yellow eyes Collin saw. Trouble is, Justin's fingered Harry anyway. Apparently, he'd been expecting an attack after what happened in the dueling club, and Peeves caught Harry at the scene. McGonagall took Harry to Dumbledore's office."

"Hopefully, Dumbledore can get Justin to calm down and listen to reason," I said.

A short while later, Harry arrived, leading with, "The Heir's on to us. He killed the school roosters so the basilisk can't be stopped that way."

"That's bad," I said.

"Dumbledore believed you're not behind any of this, right?" asked Ron.

"He told Hagrid he did when he came up to speak in my defense," said Harry.

"Did Dumbledore have any useful theories?" I asked.

"None that he felt like sharing," said Harry. "I think he figureed I knew something more."

"Like why no one's dead," I suggested. "Any ideas, Harry?"

"No one's looked at it directly," he said.

"But why not?" I pressed. "It's like it's deliberately choosing targets and situations that won'tbe fatal to its victims."

"But why would it do that?" asked Hermione.

"What if it's not supposed to kill anyone?" said Sloth. "Salazar Slytherin left it in the school, right? He thought the muggleborns were going to betray everyone, and he'd release the basilisk, stop the traitors, and return to the school a hero. Suppose his plan was to have the basilisk petrify the muggleborns, then work out who was actually a traitor and who was loyal later. Petrified people can be restored, after all."

"You think the guy who started the pureblood supremacy stuff trained his monster to not kill muggleborns?" asked Ron skeptically.

"If Slytherin was evil, why would Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff have been friends with him?" I asked. "Sure, they had a falling out, but it apparently wasn't even bad enough for the other three to eliminate his House."

"I don't think we can really count on the basilisk being friendly," said Hermione. "Harry heard it hissing about ripping, tearing, and killing. It really might've just been luck the attacks didn't end up killing someone."

"We don't really have anymore leads," said Harry.

"In the meantime, I've been putting together the parseltongue lessons," said Hermione. "We can start over the Christmas holiday. It looks as though most everyone else is going home for it because of the attacks."

"Hermione," said Ron, "how did you put together lessons when Harry's the only one that can speak parseltongue?"

"When you're learning a new language, you always start with a few specific words you'll use in conversation, then you build vocabulary and syntax until you know enough to start picking up new words on your own," explained Hermione. "I've worked out what words Harry needs to teach us and in what order."

"Um, Hermione," said Harry, "I've tried saying something in parseltongue, but it doesn't work. I think I need to be facing an actual snake to make it work."

"Don't worry," she said. "Leave that to me."

* * *

Most of the school did, in fact, go home for the holiday. On the first day of the holiday, the seven of us gathered in an unused classroom, and set the desks back up. Luna, Neville, Ron, Sloth, and I took our seats in the front row while Harry and Hermione stood at the front. Hermione transfigured a small glass terrarium on the teacher's desk.

Writing a list of English words on the chalkboard, Hermione explained, "These are some of the most commonly used words. Harry is going to go over them one at a time in parseltongue, and the rest of us will repeat. Harry can tell us if we're doing it right and correct our pronunciation."

Harry read the first word on the board a few times aloud, but was seemingly unable to make it come out in parseltongue.

"That's okay, Harry," said Hermione. "I've been giving this some thought. Serpensortia!" A snake burst from her wand just like when Draco used the spell, and fell into the terrarium. Hermione then took her seat.

With the snake there, Harry was able to produce parseltongue while looking at it, and the lesson could begin. There was a lot of trial and error that first lesson. Since Harry heard parseltongue in English, we only really knew when we got it right. It was very unlike any language I'd ever encountered, and it was obvious the human mouth and throat weren't really capable of forming the sounds perfectly. Fortunately, once any of us successfully pronounced a word, that person could help correct everyone else's pronunciation.

The conjured snake faded away after a half hour, and it was generally agreed that would define the length of our class sessions. It would be a length we could sustain after classes restarted. We also made a conscious effort to use parseltongue among ourselves when we were alone as much as possible to get additional practice.

Aside from the daily parseltongue lessons, the holiday at Hogwarts consisted of good food, games, and more than a few snowball fights. I trained Loki to use his club like tail in his chimera form as a bat to launch the projectiles I set up for him.

* * *

Author's comments:  
I wanted to get Neville involved during first year, but it was only when his skills at herbology were needed that I could really justify getting him in. Having more than one voice explaining the basic information the people raised in the wizarding world would know helps spread the burden around a bit more, and Neville really doesn't get enough chances to shine in the cannon. With Luna involved, it was never going to take that long to work out what sort of creature they were dealing with. With this chance to embrace his gifts, and some alternate speculation about Salazar Slytherin's motives, Harry will be able to get through this year with a lot less angst over nearly being sorted into Slytherin house.


	14. Chapter 20: Preparing for Confrontation

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 20) Preparing for the Confrontation  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Lockheart's failure of a dueling lesson had been the only one the dueling club had. It seemed that Lockheart intended to let the organization die of apathy and put the experience behind him. The Christmas holiday presented me with an oportunity to see if I could do something about that.

"Professor Flitwick," I said, greeting my head of house, "I hope you're having a pleasant holiday."

"Greed, how are you? With the attacks lately, the school's quieter than I can ever remember it around this time of year. I certainly don't want to ruin your good cheer, but I think I'd feel a bit better if the twins pulled something to make a racket," replied the diminutive professor.

I laughed and said, "I'll see what I can talk them into. Actually, the attacks are what I wanted to talk to you about. Did you know Professor Lockheart started a dueling club?"

"Yes. He talked to Dumbledore about it, and didn't say a word to me until all the arrangements were made. Just as well, really. I get enough of that man pretending he knows more about everyone's specialty than they do. Better Snape than me being involved in that mess."

"The thing is," I said, "Professor Lockheart's abandoned the lessons. With someone directing Slytherin's monster to attack the students and Voldemort wanting to kill Harry-"

"Don't say his name," said Professor Flitwick. "I know Dumbledore encourages it, but Dumbledore's the only wizard You-Know-Who ever feared. What's reasonable and safe for Professor Dumbledore isn't the same as what's reasonable and safe for the rest of us."

"Okay," I said, not wanting an argument. "But the point is, a dueling club was actually a good idea, especially with what Harry's bound to have to deal with one day. I've heard you used to be a dueling champion. Do you think you could pick up where Professor Lockheart left off? Please."

"Well," mused Flitwick, "I suppose if Gilderoy really has lost interest I could take a look at you lot. Make sure you haven't ended up taking in the wrong lessons."

"Thank you, Professor," I said.

"After the holidays, when everyone's back," said Professor Flitwick, affirming his decision to himself with a nod. "And don't forget to tell the Weasley twins to make a bit more noise," added Flitwick with a wink.

* * *

Fred and George didn't need much encouragement and partially transfigured a hundred or more white mice into bells. The result was brass colored mice running all over the school jingling as they went.

Christmas morning dawned with my packages containing invisibility cloaks for Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Luna, Harry's new broomstick, and Dumbledore's ten pair of thick, wool socks whisked away to the rooms of their respective recipients and replaced with a stack of packages addressed to me.

Between the sweets and books from our wizard friends, one item that stood out was a small vial of wet pencil shavings and a card with a transmutation circle on it. Curious, I dumped the vial's contents onto the card and activated the circle. It glowed blue for an instant, and the material had transmuted into a moist, sweet cake with the words, "Merry Christmas, Greed" drawn on top in brightly colored frosting. It used everything I'd taught Ron so far, and it made a very tasty cake when I tried it.

"These are expensive," said Luna when I came down to the common room that morning. She was staring at her new invisibility cloak.

"It's more convenient than having everyone crowded under one cloak," I said with a shrug. "Besides, I can make gold, remember. It's no hardship for me to buy them."

Down at breakfast, Harry thanked me for the new broom, and tried to offer his old one to Ron. Smirking, Ron refused, noting that he was an alchemist himself now, and could buy his own top of the line racing broom. He suggested Harry give his old broom to the Gryffindor team to be used by whoever needed it most.

A general aura of goodwill and cheer permeated the school. Draco and his cronies were jerks as usual, making fun of the traditional Weasley sweaters, but no one was particularly bothered, and all wrote him off as insignificant. At our parselmouth lessons, I brought the nearly complete Polyjuice. We added one of Harry's hairs to the brew and all drank.

I could feel my body rearranging itself, inside and out. It resembled the feeling I got when the organs and tissues of my homunculus body first migrated to their proper place, only far less painful. In fact, there was no pain at all. The first thing I noticed was that my vision had gone blurry.

I tapped my wand to the side of my goggles, transmuting them to account for the prescription of Harry's glasses, and everything came into focus. The other Harrys were distinguishable by their clothing and mannerisms. A quick experiment showed we'd gotten Harry's bad eyesight, but not his intuitive ability to speak to snakes.

Sloth and I borrowed wands and tried half a dozen times to invoke a simple spell, but no matter how much advice we got or how many tries, it was as futile as waving a regular stick. Polyjuice wasn't the key to gaining magic of my own. That established, we resumed the parseltongue lessons.

After the day's lesson, Sloth and I further established that our homunculus abilities, enhanced strength, regeneration, shape shifting, and Sloth's intangibility also failed to function until the potion wore off and we returned to our true forms. Effectively, polyjuice was worse than useless to us.

* * *

True to his word, the dueling club resumed at the start of the term with Professor Flitwick replacing Professor Lockheart. Professor Snape continued to offer assistance. Lockheart was prevented from returning by Flitwick offering numerous reminders of how valuable his time was and reassuring him that he'd already communicated the basics and that he could take it from here.

It didn't stop Lockheart's actual defense classes from being utterly useless, but between Flitwick and Snape, we got actual instruction on how to duel. Harry demonstrated a natural knack for dueling, and Draco had some prior instruction. As a result, both of them split their time between sparring with each other and being paired with weaker duelists. Harry really shined in an instructional role, quickly sussing out where his partner was weak and how to best improve.

For me, the main problem was speed and focus. Since most of the dueling hexes were one form or another of human transmutation, and I had to mimic the wand motions and incantations even as I performed the alchemy to duplicate the effect, my casting times were abysmal, letting my opponent get their spell off first nine times out of ten. I was put through some drills to sharpen my times and make the words and motions come more quickly and effortlessly to mind. I resolved to perform similar repetitive drills on my other spells because of just how much easier the dueling spells had become to perform quickly.

Our extra curricular parseltongue lessons continued as well. In one notable lesson Harry designed, breaking from Hermione's curriculum of conversation practice, we each took turns guiding a snake through a maze, giving it parseltongue instructions on when to turn and which way. After that lesson, we all headed back toward our dorms, but stopped when we heard Filch yelling angrily.

Concerned there might have been another attack, we followed the sound of his voice to the corridor outside Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, where the initial attack on Mrs. Norris had taken place. Water was flooding out from under the door again and Filch was livid.

After Filch stormed off muttering, Ron asked, "Now, what's up with her?"

"Let's go and see," said Harry, reaching for the door.

"Harry!" said Neville, blushing bright red but grabbing hold of his arm just the same. "You can' go in there. That's a girls' bathroom."

"Oh, it's alright, Neville," placated Hermione. "This is Moaning Myrtle's toilet. It's out of order because she's almost always throwing fits and flooding it. Even when she hasn't done that, no one actually uses this bathroom if they can help it." She pushed Neville aside and went in.

Luna and Sloth followed, with Harry and Ron darting by right after. I put a hand on Neville's shoulder and said, "If it makes you feel any better, I can look like this." Then I used my shape shifting abilities to change gender, growing my brown, spiked hair out until it hung down my back, shifting my facial features slightly, and developing small breasts appropriate for my apparent age. Then I walked in after. Neville sighed and followed.

"You make a pretty girl," said Sloth when I'd entered, smirking with amusement.

Harry approached Myrtle's stall and spoke up. "What's up, Myrtle?"

"Who's that? Come to throw something else at me?" asked the haunted toilet.

"Why would I throw something at you?" asked Harry.

"Don't ask me," yelled the miserable specter of a dead thirteen year old girl as she emerged from the toilet. "Here I am, minding my own business, and someone thinks it;s funny to throw a book at me."

I glanced around the room and noticed a small, thin book lying near Neville's feet. He'd noticed it too, but made no move to reach for it, instead returning his attention to Myrtle and Harry's conversation.

"But it can't possibly hurt you if someone throws something at you," said Harry. "I mean, it'd just go through you."

Myrtle was not impressed with Harry's reasoning and wailed, "Let's all throw books at Myrtle, because she can't feel it! Ten points if it goes through her head! Well, ha, ha, ha! What a lovely game, I don't think!"

In a show of solidarity with Myrtle on this point, Sloth balled up a fist and swung a hard backhand towards Harry's face. Harry flinched as Sloth's hand passed harmlessly through Harry's head. That seemed to cheer Myrtle somewhat.

Slightly cowed, Harry asked, "Who threw it at you, anyway?"

"I don't know," replied Myrtle. "I was just sitting in the U-bend, thinking about death, and it fell right through the top of my head. It's over there. It got washed out."

Harry reached for the dripping wet book, but Ron stopped him, holding up a restraining arm to bar his path.

"What?" asked Harry.

"Are you crazy? It could be dangerous," said Ron.

Harry laughed. "Dangerous? Come off it, how could it be dangerous?"

"You'd be surprised," said Ron gravely. "Some of the books the Ministry's confiscated. Dad told me. There was one that burned y our eyes out. And everyone who read Sonnets of a Sorcerer spoke in limericks for the rest of their lives. And some old witch in Bath had a book that you could never stop reading. You just had to wander around with your nose in it, trying to do everything one handed."

"And don't forget how innocuous that coin I gave you looks," I interjected. "How do we check it to be sure it's safe?"

None of us having an answer to that, we just stared at the soaked book for a long moment.

"Well, we won't find out unless we look at it," said Harry, ducking around Ron and snatching up the book. "T. M. Riddle," said Harry, reading a name off the first page of what proved to be a diary.

"Hang on, I know that name," said Ron. "T. M. Riddle got an award for special services to the school fifty years ago."

"How on earth do you know that?" asked Harry.

"Because Filch made me polish his shield about fifty times in detention. That was the one I burped slugs all over. If you'd wiped slime off a name for an hour, you'd remember it too."

I looked sheepish. It'd been my fault his curse backfired. If I'd been more focused on getting him a good wand and less focused on my curiosity over whether I could make a working wand, it never would have happened. Still feeling guilty, I tapped the diary with my wand and evaporated away all the water drenching its pages. Harry turned a page.

"He never wrote in it," reported Harry.

"Or maybe he did," noted Hermione. "It might be invisible ink. Aparecium!" she tapped her wand on the diary thrice to no effect.

Harry lookeda t the back, reporting, "He must've been muggle born to have bought a diary from Vauxhall Road."

Hermione produced a bright red eraser from her bag. "It's a revealer. I got it in Diagon Alley." She rubbed it on the first page, again to no effect.

"Well, it's not much use," said Ron. Then lowering his voice, "Fifty points if you can get it through Myrtle's nose."

I slapped him on the back of his head. "Don't be a jerk."

"Why did someone try to chuck this?" asked Harry rhetorically. "I wouldn't mind knowing how Riddle got an award for special services to Hogwarts either."

"Could've been anything," said Ron. "Maybe he got thirty OWLS or saved a teacher from the giant squid." Again dropping his voice, "Maybe he murdered Myrtle. That would've done everyone a favor."

He hadn't dropped it low enough, and Myrtle screamed in rage and shot down into her toilet. An instant later, water spouted up all of them as though there'd been an explosion in the pipes. We all fled the bathroom.

"Pull something like that again and you can forget about ever learning a bit of alchemy from me ever again!" I yelled at Ron when we were well away from the flooding corridor.

"You're taking her side?" demanded Ron, incredulously. "She just tried to drown us!"

"You told her everyone's better off with her dead, and you were chucking about her being murdered," I shot back. "You know how sensitive she is. De you even know how she died? For all we know, she could've been murdered!" I stormed off angrily, with Sloth and Luna following. Neville didn't look sure whether to come with us or stick with his fellow Gryffindors. 

* * *

"Ron went back and apologized to Myrtle," reported Neville the next day as we waited for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to show up for the parseltongue lessons.

"Did she apologize back for overreacting?" asked Luna curiously.

"No, she accused him of trying to make fun of her," replied Neville.

"The important thing is he tried," I said. "Now she's the unreasonable one again. I didn't like the idea I was passing on my knowledge and power to a bully."

"Myrtle's going to keep getting people picking on her as long as she keeps reacting like this," noted Sloth.

"Maybe, but it shouldn't be people I call friends picking on her," I replied.

"I'm just saying if you really want to hel Myrtle, it'll take more than knocking some sense into Ron," said Sloth.

"Ron," I said when he, Harry, and Hermione entered, "thanks for trying to apologize to Myrtle."

"I didn't do it because you said to," said Ron firmly. He took his seat and pointedly avoided making eye contact with me.

"I'm glad to hear that," I said, elciting looks of surprise from everyone but Sloth and Luna. "If you did it because I made you, it wouldn't mean much, so I'm glad you chose to try and apologize because it was your choice. I'm sorry I threatened to cut you off. It's just, you already know how to make a circle that turns all the oxygen in the school to carbon monoxide and kill everyone here. Alchemic knowledge just gets more dangerous from here in the wrong hands."

"Yeah, I get it," said Ron awkwardly. "Can we just get back to our lessons?"

"Speaking of which," noted Luna, "shouldn't you have said all that in parseltongue?"

* * *

Between dueling club, parseltongue lessons, and his continuing alchemy lessons, Ron and I had little opportunity to be awkward with one another, so we were forced to put the argument behind us quickly. Ron was placated immensely by me mentioning that Myrtle wasn't behaving well with her constant temper tantrums and refusing to accept apologies.

Harry continued to hold on to the diary and seemed sure it was important, but couldn't properly articulate why. Neville and I made a large stockpile of mandrake draught in case of future attacks, but they seemed to have stopped. Presumably the heir figured out how ineffectual the attacks had proven with a ready supply of mandrake draught. Lockheart, of course, was claiming credit for stopping the attacks himself.

The Gryffindor Quidditch practices continued at the deranged pace set by their captain, Olliver Wood, meaning that virtually every moment Harry wasn't with us, he was out on the field, making it impossible to slip into the lab long enough to do more than change out the red water tanks and collect red stones.

One day, in mid February, I came down to breakfast to find the Great Hall decorated with massive pink flowers, likely the product of an engorgement charm, and heart shaped confetti raining down from the ceiling, getting all over the food. At the head table, Professor Lockheart rose to make an announcement.

"Happy Valentine's Day, and may I thank the forty six people who have so far sent me cards! Yes, I have taken the liberty of arranging this little surprise for you all, and it doesn't end here!"

At Lockheart's signal, a dozen dwarves wearing golden wings and carrying harps trudged heavily into the Great Hall. They carried themselves more like mercenaries than costumed performers. Lockheart explained, "My friendly card carrying cupids! They will be roving around the school today delivering your valentines! And the fun doesn't stop there! I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion? And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!"

I don't think I'd ever seen Professor Snape look more murderous than when I approached him on his way out of the Great Hall.

"Professor Snape," I said worriedly, "about what Professor Lockehart said at breakfast... Love Potions..." Snape's teeth gritted together, and his wand hand clenched into a fist. I continued, "There's an antidote, right?" Snape blinked then relaxed. A small smirk found its way to his lips.

"Why yes, Mr. Oren, there is," replied Professor Snape. "Am I to presume you wish to learn how to brew one?"

"Yes. Please, Professor," I replied. My fears of having my own mind and heart usurped combined with my certainty that Sloth didn't deserve to have something like that happen again pushed to the surface of my mind, where Snape could read them with crystal clarity were he so inclined.

After a long moment, Snape replied, "Very well, follow me." He led me down to the dungeons where the potions classroom was and wrote a recipe on the chalkboard. 

* * *

That day, Lcokehart's dwarves jammed a number of valentines day cards into my hands. Only the card from Sloth was signed. The others were from secret admirers. Sloth's card had an incomplete transmutation circle in its center. The text read, "Open it up in private. Love, Sloth."

Finding a private moment between classes, I took out my quill and finished drawing the transmutation circle in, then I activated it. The card disintegrated, leaving behind an oval shaped wizard photograph that had been hidden inside. The photograph was of Sloth dressed in a cupid costume. She wore it better than Lockheart's dwarves did. Holding up a bow, she drew back an arrow with a heart shaped head from a quiver and shot it at the camera.

I smiled and returned to my room. Opening my trunk, I retrieved the locket she'd given me for Christmas the previous year, and replaced the photograph inside it with this new one. I put the closed locket around my neck and went to find Sloth.

When I found her, she was holding up a rose tinted glass bottle with a transmutation circle etched into its base and the words, "Know always that our love is true, Greed" inscribed on the front.

"I see my gift was a bit more self-explanatory," said Sloth when she saw me wearing her locket.

"It's a love potion antidote," I explained. "I asked Professor Snape for the recipe this morning."

"And this?" she asked, tipping the bottle so the transmutation circle on the bottom faced me.

"It's a promise," I said, touching the circle and activating it. The bottle glowed blue and the words rearranged themselves into the recipe for the love potion antidote. "We'll get you your own soul and you'll be able to use this circle to change the words on the bottle back and forth whenever you want."

We shared one last kiss before we had to go back to our separate dorms for the evening. All in all, despite the dwarves, the holiday had been a success. 

* * *

The next day, we learned Harry had learned the secret of Riddle's diary. A copy of Tom Marvolo Riddle's consciousness and memories was magically preserved in its pages. Riddle had shown Harry the actions which earned him his reward for special services to the school.

"We were wrong," explained Harry. "About the basilisk, about Slytherin's monster not wanting to kill anyone, and about who opened the Chamber last time."

Harry recounted in detail what he'd seen in the memory. The previous opening had happened fifty years ago. A girl had died, and the headmaster at the time was considering closing the school. Faced with the prospect of being sent to live out the rest of his life in a muggle orphanage, the half blood Tom Riddle went to confront the source of the attacks. Rhubeus Hagrid. Hagrid denied that the giant spider he was protecting ever killed anyone and fought Riddle to give it a chance to get away.

"I don't buy it," I said when Harry finished his account.

"We always knew Hagrid had been expelled," said Harry, "and the attacks must've stopped after Hagrid was kicked out. Otherwise, Riddle wouldn't have got his award."

"Hagrid does have a habit of underestimating how dangerous some creatures can be," said Sloth. "Remember Norbert?"

"Who's Norbert?" asked Neville.

"A baby dragon we helped babysit last year," I said.

"Draco was telling the truth about that?" asked Neville, floored.

"Norbert didn't hurt anybody," said Ron, pointedly ignoring the venomous bite he'd taken to his and in his zeal to defend Hagrid.

"It can't be a spider this time," said Luna. "They don't have slitted yellow eyes like all the victims saw."

I nodded in agreement. "I still think a basilisk makes the most sense."

"Even so," said Sloth, "we need to talk to Hagrid. Confirm what happened and get his side of the story."

"That'd be a cheerful visit," said Ron sarcastically. "'Hello, Hagrid. Tell us, have you been setting anything bad and hairy loose on the castle lately?'"

"The attacks have stopped," noted Hermione. "Maybe whoever's behind this really has given up. Do we have to dredge up bad memories of Hagrid's expulsion if no one else is attacked?"

"He's already thinking about it," said Luna. "He knows why he was expelled, and he knows what's been going on lately. We won't be bringing up anything he doesn't already have on his mind." 

* * *

So, we all went down to speak with Hagrid at his hut. Loki trotted along at my side. Hagrid looked miserable when we arrived, but put on a genial smile and offered us some tea. Luna tactlessly broke the ice.

"We know why you were expelled."

Hagrid fumbled his tea pot and looked up nervously. "Excuse me?"

"We don't believe you had anything to do with the attacks, this time or last time," Hermione rushed to clarify. "We just wanted to hear your story about what happened last time."

Hagrid sighed and took a seat. "It wasn't much different from this time. Students were being attacked and left petrified. I got blamed for it, on account of my being..." He trailed off.

"Half giant?" guessed Luna.

"You know?" he asked, surprised. She nodded.

"What about the creature you were hiding?" asked Harry.

"Aragog never hurt no one," affirmed Hagrid. "He couldn't have if he'd wanted to. I kept him in a cupboard and didn't let him out until the night I was expelled."

"Do you know what did kill that girl?" asked Harry.

Hagrid shook his head. "No. That is to say, I never found out. I think Aragog knew, but I could never get him to tell me. Too scared of whatever it was."

"Wait, this giant spider can talk?" demanded Ron.

"Of course he can talk," said Hagrid. "Acromantula are smarter than most people you'll meet."

"Can?" asked Luna. "Aragog is still around? Can we meet him?"

"I'd like to introduce you," said Hagrid, "but the colony doesn't really like people coming around."

Luna was visibly disappointed.

"Hopefully the attacks have stopped for good," noted Harry. "But just in case, you should take these." He pulled out a set of goggles sized for Hagrid.

"I've been meaning to ask," said Hagrid, accepting the headgear, "what's the idea with these?"

"We think the monster's a basilisk," said Neville. "If you see its eyes directly, you die, but these have mirrors in them so you'll only get petrified. We think your roosters got killed to protect the basilisk from their crow."

"That makes sense," said Hagrid, scratching his beard.

* * *

With no further attacks, the most stressful part of the Easter holiday was picking out our classes for next year. We needed to select a minimum of two electives out of Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, Arithmancy, Divination, and Muggle Studies. We didn't have much more than the names and the advice of our seniors to go on.

Sloth thought I was crazy for signing up for all five electives. I wouldn't have a free moment with all those classes plus the homework, she argued. I responded that I might never get another chance to study these subjects, and I didn't want to miss my chance. Sloth signed up for Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, since those seemed like the two classes with the most practical applications. That, and those were the classes Harry and Ron signed up for. 

* * *

On the Saturday morning of the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, Harry caught us before breakfast and hissed in parseltongue that someone had gotten into his room and stolen Riddle's diary. Having been in the Gryffindor dorm, that narrowed the list of potential suspects considerably. I pondered this latest mystery at breakfast, hissing with Luna in parseltongue and making the other Ravenclaws nervous. Not that it mattered, since they already didn't like us.

"If they got into Harry's trunk without alarms sounding, it has to have been a Gryffindor boy," I hissed.

"It obviously isn't Neville or Ron," Luna hissed back. "Whoever it was is probably the person who tried to flush it in the first place."

Our improving command of parseltongue afforded us another advantage that day. As we left the Great Hall, we recognized the voice Harry had talked about.

"Kill this time. Let me rip, tear."

Harry was expected on the Quidditch field, but the rest of us, having heard the voice (and confirmed it was parseltongue and Harry wasn't crazy) followed the voice and investigated. As a group, we sprinted through the corridors. Rounding a corner, I caught sight of a pair of yellow, slitted eyes. The next thing I knew, I was waking up i the infirmary along with Ron, Neville, Hermione, Luna, Sloth, and nearly half a dozen other students. It looked as though everyone who'd been petrified this time were people wearing the mirrored goggles we had been advocating for.

The Quidditch match had been canceled, and Luna and I were sent immediately back to Ravenclaw tower where Professor Flitwick was waiting to make an announcement.

"All students will return to their House common rooms by six o'clock in the evening. No student is to leave the dormitories after that time. You will be escorted to each lesson by a teacher. No student is to use the bathroom unaccompanied by a teacher. All further Quidditch training and matches are to be postponed. There will be no more evening activities."

Professor Flitwick closed the scroll he was reading from and added, "This last mass attack of nearly a dozen students has exhausted the supply of mandrake draught that had been fortuitously donated by the Longbottom family. The school staff are taking this recent escalation seriously, and if the culprit cannot be identified, we may have no choice but to close the school for everybody's safety."

"We need to go see Hagrid," I hissed to Luna. "Aragog knows something more, and we need to know what."

"After everyone else is in bed, we'll get our invisibility cloaks," she agreed, sticking to parseltongue in a low voice.

* * *

As it turned out, we weren't the only ones with that idea. Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville had all headed out under their invisibility cloaks, and we bumped into them right outside Hagrid's door. Sloth was already inside Hagrid's hut.

The groundskeeper answered his door with a crossbow in hand, though he lowered it when he saw who was there.

"What're you lot doing here?" he asked after we were all inside. Hagrid seemed extremely nervous.

"It's about Aragog," started Harry when a knock came at the door. We quickly got under our cloaks when Hagrid went to answer.

Dumbledore entered, followed by a grey haired man in a grey, striped suit, red tie, black cloak, purple boots, and a green bowler hat.

"That's dad's boss," whispered Ron in parseltongue. "Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic." The proper names were in English, and someone nudged Ron into silence.

Fudge declared, "Bad business, Hagrid. Very bad business. Had to come. Four attacks, and now almost a dozen at once. Things've gone far enough. Ministry's got to act."

"I never," stuttered Hagrid. "You know I never, Professor Dumbledore, sir-"

"I want it understood, Cornelius," said Dumbledore with a hard edge in his voice, "that Hagrid has my full confidence."

"Look, Albus," said Fudge almost apologetically, "Hagrid's record's against him. Ministry's got to do something. The school governors have been in touch."

"Yet again, Cornelius, I tell you that taking Hagrid away will not help in the slightest," said Dumbledore firmly.

"Look at it from my point of view," Fudge practically begged. "I'm under a lot of pressure. Got to be seen to be doing something. If it turns out it wasn't Hagrid, he'll be back and no more said. But I've got to take him. Got to. Wouldn't be doing my duty-"

"Take me? Take me where?" asked Hagrid, showing genuine fear. This from a man who thought dragons were cuddly.

Fudge stared at his pointed boots as he said, "For a short stretch only. Not a punishment, Hagrid. More a precaution. If someone else is caught, you'll be let out with a full apology."

"Not Azkaban?" gasped Hagrid in horror.

Another knock at the door interrupted. It was Lucius Malfoy.

"Already here, Fudge? Good, good."

"What're you doing here? Get out of my house," said Hagrid, his fear turning to outrage and anger.

"My dear man, please believe me, I have no pleasure at all in being inside your-er-do you call this a house? I simply called at the school and was told that the headmaster was here."

"And what exactly did you want with me, Lucius?" asked Dumbledore.

"Dreadful thing, Dumbledore, but the governors feel it's time for you to step aside." He produced a scroll from a jacket pocket. "This is an order of suspension. You'll find all twelve signatures on it. I'm afraid we feel you're losing your touch. How many attacks have there been now? Eleven more this afternoon, wasn't it? At this rate, there'll be no muggleborns left at Hogwarts, and we all know what an awful loss that would be to the school."

"Oh, now see here, Lucius," objected Fudge. "Dumbledore suspended? No, no. Last thing we want just now-"

"The appointment or suspension of the headmaster is a matter for the governors, Fudge," said Malfoy, "and as Dumbledore has failed to stop these attacks-"

"See here, Malfoy, if Dumbledore can't stop them... I mean to say, who can?" begged Fudge pathetically. There was something fundamentally alien to me about a government system where the head of state couldn't overrule a school board, but that was apparently a thing in this world.

"That remains to be seen," replied Lucius, "but as all twelve of us have voted-"

"And how many did you have to threaten and blackmail before they agreed, Malfoy, eh?" demanded Hagrid furiously.

"Dear, dear, you know that temper of yours will lead you into trouble one of these days. I would advise you not shout at the Azkaban guards like that. They won't like it at all," replied Lucius Malfoy smugly.

"You can't take Dumbledore away! Take him away and the muggleborns won't stand a chance! There'll be killing next!" yelled Hagrid manicly.

"Calm yourself, Hagrid," snapped Dumbledore, saving Hagrid from looking any more deranged than he already did. "If the governors want my removal, Lucius, I shall, of course, step aside." Fudge and Hagrid both made to protest, but Dumbledore kept talking. "However, you will find that I will only truly have left the school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it." Dumbledore subtly, but meaningfully looked at our hidden group when he said that. He must've heard something and put the pieces together.

Malfoy drolled, "Admirable sentiments. We shall all miss your, er, highly individual way of running things, Albus, and only hope that your successor will manage to prevent any, ah, 'killins'." The last word was a snide parody of Hagrid's accent.

As the entire group moved to leave, Hagrid stopped and took a steadying breath. "If anyone wanted to find out some stuff, all they'd have to do would be to follow the spiders. That'd lead them right. That's all I'm saying. All right, I'm coming." At the door, he paused again and loudly declared, "And someone'll need to feed Fang while I'm away."

"Follow the spiders! Directions to Aragog?" I guessed, taking off my invisibility cloak when they'd left.

"Probably," said Harry. "I want to know who Dumbledore thinks we should ask for help." 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Not talking to Hagrid in the original didn't make much sense to me. He didn't have much useful information, but it was so obvious a step that there was no good reason to just accept Riddle's story without even trying to get confirmation.


	15. Chapter 21: Defeating the Monsters

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 21) Defeating the Monsters  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The following weeks saw no further attacks, but at this point, no one was letting their guard down. I kept an eye out for any spiders to follow, and consulted with Luna in the Ravenclaw common room nightly, but the added security, canceled evening activities, and class to class escorting mean I didn't get much chance to check in with Sloth or the Gryffindors. Luna and I conjured snakes in the common room to continue to at least try to keep up with our parseltongue lessons on our own. It was slow going, but there was little else to do.

One day, a note made its way into my hands through a series of student couriers. It was written in code. Alchemists routinely encrypt our research notes so our secrets don't fall into the wrong hands. Sloth and I had taught a cypher to Ron as part of his alchemy training. Once decoded, the note indicated Ron had seen spiders heading for the forbidden forest, and that he, Harry, Hermione, and Neville were going to check it out tonight. The note added that he'd feel a lot better about that plan if I brought Loki.

"We meet at Hagrid's hut tonight," I hissed to Luna after I'd read the note.

Hagrid's dog Fang greeted us excitedly when we arrived.

"Greed, you got Ron's note," said Sloth when we opened the door. She ran up and hugged me.

Embracing Sloth in turn, I said, "Those security precautions have been intolerable. The only people I can spend any time with are my housemates. No offense, Luna."

"Not to mention, I've had to try to keep up on elemental transmutation on my own," said Ron, dropping his cloak as he entered with Harry, Neville, and Hermione.

"And don't forget the parseltongue lessons," added Sloth, breaking our embrace.

"Hopefully, that ends tonight," said Harry. "The acromantula colony's somewhere in the forbidden forest. Once we find out what Aragog knows, hopefully, that'll be enough to stop the attacks for good."

The seven of us gathered up fang and Loki, incited our wands to illuminate our path with a "Lumos!" incantation, and entered the forest. The last time, Hagrid had said there was nothing in the forest that would hurt us if Fang was there. Admittedly, he'd been wrong then, since Voldemort had been in the forest, but hopefully this time it would hold true.

After some searching, we managed to find a line of spiders traveling in an unnaturally straight line. I made a note of the vector and went to follow. We followed for an hour, leaving the path at some point. It made sense that Aragog would nest in the deeper part of the forest.

Suddenly, Fang gave an alarming bark. In response, Loki growled and transformed, taking on his three hundred pound, green scaled, gold maned chimera form. Over Loki's continued low growl and Fang's whimpering as he hid behind the chimera, the rest of us could hear snapping twigs and crashing brush as something considerably larger than even Loki was moving towards us.

"Easy, boy," I said, putting a hand on Loki's mane even as I pointed my wand toward the sounds. "This might be who we came here to see."

Suddenly, a pair of brilliantly bright lights appeared from the direction of the noise. I recognized them as headlights.

"Harry, it's our car!" shouted Ron, relaxing.

"This is the car you flew to school in?" asked Hermione in a vaguely disapproving tone.

"It's been here all this time," said Ron oblivious or inured to her tone. "Look at it. The forest's turned it wild." Ron patted the hood of the car I'd first laid eyes on in Arthur Weasley's garage. "And we thought it was going to attack us. I wondered where it had gone."

The reunion didn't last long. Before any of us had time to react, huge black spiders, the size of large horses, dropped from the trees on top of each of us. Even fang and Loki were snatched up and hauled off the ground into the trees.

"Is anyone hurt?" came Sloth's voice from nearby.

"I don't think they're trying to hurt us," said Luna, excitedly. "They knew just how much force to apply to restrain us without injuring us, even though they're strong enough to pin Loki."

"Maybe they're taking us to see Aragog," muttered Neville, nervously in a voice that sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

With no sign anyone was hurt, we allowed the acromantula to carry us into their nest, where swarms of equally enormous spiders were gathered. The ones carrying us dropped us onto the ground in a small cluster in the center of the clearing where they made their home, right outside a massive structure made of webbing. Everyone seemed alright, though Fang looked terrified and unsure which way to run. Loki picked a side and took up a defensive position.

"Aragog! Aragog!" called out one of the spiders in English.

"What is it?" asked an even larger spider that emerged from the web structure. It was more than twice the size of the next largest spider, with grey hair on its abdomen and cataracts covering all eight of its eyes.

"Men," replied the spider who had called.

"Is it Hagrid?" asked the large spider who must be Aragog.

"Strangers," replied another spider.

"Kill them," demanded Aragog with fear in his voice. Sloth and I were on our feet in an instant, each of us taking a corner of a triangle with Loki as the third point. Our wands were at the ready.

"We're friends of Hagrid's!" shouted Harry from where he lay on the ground. That gave the spiders pause. Neither Sloth, Loki, nor I even thought about letting down our guard.

"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," said Aragog.

"Hagrid's in trouble," said Harry. "That's why we've come."

"In trouble? But why has he sent you?" asked Aragog with genuine concern in his inhuman voice.

Harry took a breath and explained, "They think, up at the school, that Hagrid's been setting a- something on the students. They've taken him to Azkaban."

Aragog seemed worried sick. "But that was years ago. Years and years ago. I remember it well. That's why they made him leave the school. They believed that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."

"And you... you didn't come from the Chamber of Secrets?" confirmed Harry.

"I? I was not born in the castle. I come from a distant land. A traveler gave me to Hagrid when I was an egg. Hagrid was only a boy, but he cared for me, kept me hidden in a cupboard in the castle, feeding me scraps from the table. Hagrid is my good friend and a good man. When I was discovered and blamed for the death of a girl, he protected me. I have lived here in the forest ever since, where Hagrid still visits me. He even found me a wife, Mosag, and you see how our family has grown, all through Hagrid's goodness."

"So you never-never attacked anyone?" asked Harry, trying to get the story straight.

"Never," affirmed Aragog. "It would have been my instinct, but I never harmed a human. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up. Our kind like the dark and quiet."

"But then," said Harry, gathering his courage, "do you know what did kill that girl? Is it a basilisk?"

"We do not speak of it!" snapped Aragog. "We do not name it! I never even told Hagrid the name of that dread creature, though he asked me many times."

Loki growled low and threateningly as the spiders started to inch towards us.

"We'll just go, then," said Harry as Aragog started backing into his domed web.

"Go? I think not," said Aragog. "My sons and daughters do not harm Hagrid on my command, but I cannot deny them fresh meat when it wanders so willingly into our midst."

"If you value the lives of your children, you'll call them off," I said firmly even as I picked out my targets. There were a lot of them.

"Goodbye, friend of Hagrid," was Aragog's reply as he disappeared into his web. The spiders rushed forward. The others got to their feet and drew wands.

I stomped my foot and impaled half a dozen acromantula on stone spikes. At the same time, I flicked my wand three times, and three giant spiders exploded into gore and viscera as their bodies were alchemically deconstructed.

Loki pounced on a spider, digging his reinforced claws into its back. With his powerful jaws, my chimera bit into the spider's neck, and cleanly severed its head. A second spider tried to bite Loki, but its poisoned fangs broke off as they failed to penetrate his armored scales. With a flick of his club like tail, the acromantula that had bitten him was sent flying into a third giant spider.

Sloth slashed her wand in front of her, and a curved wall of glowing red, alchemically solidified air sprang up just long enough for a group of spiders to crash into it mid-leap. Digging her heels into the ground, a group of spiders suddenly found their legs buried up to the first joint in the ground with no way to free themselves.

Suddenly, the car burst onto the scene. Horn blaring, it ran down half a dozen spiders and skidded to a halt in the clearing where we were fighting. The doors threw themselves open.

Sloth, Loki, and I continued to fight a delaying action as everyone quickly scurried into the car. Hurling ourselves into the back seat, where Luna, Neville, and Fang were already secured, the undetectable extension charm meant we didn't bump into anyone. Once we were inside, the car fled the acromantula colony, zigzagging of its own accord around trees and eventually losing our pursuers.

The car deposited us outside the forbidden forest, and stayed just long enough to accept some grateful pats on the hood before driving back into the forest. Ron vomited once he was out of the car.

"'Follow the spiders.' I'll never forgive Hagrid. We're lucky to be alive," said Ron.

"I bet he thought Aragog wouldn't hurt friends of his," offered Harry.

"That's exactly Hagrid's problem!" yelled Ron. "He always thinks monsters aren't as bad as they're made out, and look where it's got him! A cell in Azkaban! What was the point of sending us in there? What have we found out, I'd like to know?"

"We know it wasn't the acromantula making the attacks," said Luna, "and got one more indication the monster is a basilisk."

"We also found out the girl who died," added Hermione carefully, "died in a bathroom."

"Myrtle," said Sloth, following her reasoning. "We should have asked her about this from the start."

"The first attack happened right outside there," noted Harry. "And if we're right about it using the pipes, there could be an entrance to the Chamber of Secrets right in there."

"That'd explain why Dumbledore never found it," noted Neville. "He doesn't spend a lot of time in girls' bathrooms."

"We need to talk to her," I said, "but with everyone patrolling all night, us getting escorted everywhere all day, ad Myrtle's bathroom out of order so we can't even use having to pee as an excuse, how do we get there to talk?"

"We'll just have to watch for opportunities," said Harry.

* * *

The next day, exams were announced as being one week away. After last year, I was much less worried. I spent most of the evening studying and reviewing mostly for lack of anything better to spend my time doing. I did manage to get in a couple games of wizard chess against Luna. It was a much more even match than those against Ron.

The next day, just before break, an announcement rang through the halls, "All students to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."

I debated taking the opportunity to head for Myrtle's bathroom, but decided whatever had happened was something I ought to know before entering the Chamber of Secrets, so I returned to the Ravenclaw common room. At length, Professor Flitwick arrived to explain what had happened.

The Heir of Slytherin had taken Ginny Weasley, Ron's little sister, and left the message, "Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever." The rest of us were to be evacuated tomorrow morning via the Hogwarts Express. Meanwhile, Professor Lockheart had been dispatched to attempt to find and rescue Ginny.

"We know where the Chamber is and what's inside it," hissed Luna to me when Flitwick had finished. "He doesn't have any goggles or mandrake draught. We have to give him every advantage he can get."

"Agreed," I hissed. "Get your cloak and set up a dummy in your bed. Once you're done, meet me back here."

Under cover of our invisibility cloaks, Loki, Luna, and I snuck out of Ravenclaw tower and headed for Lockheart's office. When we arrived, we found Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville had beaten us there with the same idea.

"You mean you're running away?" demanded Harry of Lockheart. "After all that stuff you did in your books-"

"Books can be misleading," wheedled Lockheart.

"You wrote them!" Harry shouted.

"My dear boy, do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a harelip. Come on."

"So you've just been taking credit for what a load of other people have done?" demanded Harry.

"Harry, Harry, it's not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved. I had to track those people down, ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did, then I had to put a memory charm on them so they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my memory charms. No, it's been a lot of work, Harry. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long, hard slog."

"You're a monster," I said, throwing back my invisibility cloak. "All those people with their memories wiped just so you could sell your books." My hand was in my pocket, and I gripped the soul coin I kept there. "And now all we know about how they accomplished their feats is your poorly written books."

Shrugging, Lockheart drew is wand and said, "Sorry, children, but I'll have t put memory charms on you now. Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book."

"Expelliarmus!" called out Harry, and Lockheart's wand flew from his hand, only to be caught by Sloth, who'd been hiding under her own invisibility cloak. "Shouldn't have let Professor Snape teach us that one," added Harry.

"What do you want me to do?" begged Lockheart pathetically. "I don't know where the Chamber of Secrets is. There's nothing I can do."

"You're in luck," said Harry viciously. "We think we know where it is, and what's inside it. Let's go."

The seven of us marched Lockheart to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom at wandpoint. The man was in obvious fear for his life, but none of us had any sympathy for him. His petty ambitions, indifference to the people he'd hurt, his tampering with people's minds, and his poor notes all reminded me unpleasantly of Shao Tucker.

"Oh, it's you," said Myrtle when we entered. She didn't comment on the teacher we were holding against his will. "What do you want this time?"

"To ask how you died," said Harry.

"Oh, it was dreadful," said Myrtle with a dreamy flourish that made it sound like the exact opposite. "It happened right in here. I died in this very stall. I remember it so well. I'd hidden because Olive Hornby was teasing me about my glasses. The door was locked and I was crying, and then I heard somebody come in. They said something funny, a different language I think it must have been. Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So, I unlocked the door to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then... I died."

"How?" asked Harry.

Lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, Myrtle said, "No idea. I just remember seeing a pair of great big, yellow eyes. My whole body sort of seized up, and then I was floating away. And then I came back again. I was determined to haunt Olive Hornby, you see. Oh, she was sorry she'd ever laughed at my glasses."

"The eys, were they slitted, like a snake's?" asked Luna.

"Oh, yes," said Myrtle, happily soaking in the attention. I'd ever seen the gloomy ghost so pleased.

"Where exactly did you see the eyes?" asked Harry.

"Somewhere there," said Myrtle gesturing towards a sink.

"There's a mirror there," I noted, "but if she died from the basilisk's gaze, she must've seen it directly."

"That tap's never worked," said Myrtle as the others examined it. They'd found a small snake engraved on the tap.

"Let me try something," said Ron. Then in parseltongue, "Open up."

At Ron's command, the tab glowed and spun of its own accord. The sink attached to it lowered through some unseen mechanism, revealing a large pipe that a grown man could climb inside. We'd found the hidden entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

"I'm going down there," said Harry.

"Me too," said Ron.

"We'll have better odds of rescuing Ginny if we all go together," I said to nods from all the other students.

"Well, you hardly seem to need me," said Lockheart. "I'll just-"

"You can go first," said Ron, with hatred burning in his eyes for the man who was still trying to abandon his sister toher fate.

Lockheart protested further, but was shoved down forcibly. I sent Loki down after him, and the others went to follow. While they hopped down, I turned to Myrtle.

"Can you go and tell the teachers where we are?" I asked. "That way, if something happens to us down there, there'll still be hope."

Excited to be important, Myrtle hummed to herself as she drifted through the nearest wall. I was the last to go down the pipe, which slid farther down than I would have imagined.

"Remember," said Harry as I was brushing slime from the slide off my robe and getting to my feet, "any sign of movement, close your eyes right away."

"Also, stay separated," I said. "It got us last time because we were all clustered in a group. This time, stay separate and it can only petrify us one at a time."

"That's much better," said Neville sarcastically, but he complied.

The tunnel was lit only by our wandlight. The floor was littered with the bones of dead animals. As a precaution, I clapped my hands and touched Loki's head, sealing his eyes shut with alchemy and adjusting the arrays tattooed on his body to ensure they stayed that way in either of his forms.

Ron said, "There's something up there."

Our eyes all snapped shut, and we stopped breathing to listen.

"Maybe it's asleep," whispered Harry.

I kept my eyes on the floor as we crept up to what turned out to be a shed snake skin. It was bright green and enormous. There was no longer any hint of a doubt that we were dealing with a basilisk.

Lockheart fell to his knees at the sight of the enormous skin. Ron went up to him and prodded him angrily with his wand. "Get up."

In an instant, Lockheart lunged at Ron and wrested his wand out of his hands. His perfect teeth gleamed in the wandlight as Lockheart beamed in triumph.

"The adventure ends here. I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that you all tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body. Say goodbye to your memories! Obli-"

He didn't finish the incantation. With a speed born form the Philosopher's Stone I had consumed, I cleared the distance between us in a blink of na eye and pressed a soul coin to Gilderoy Lockheart's forehead. The array on the back glowed red for an instant on contact with his bare flesh, then his body fell limp and collapsed to the floor.

"You killed him," said Neville in shock.

"Actually, he's still breathing," reported Luna.

"I removed his soul," I explained, pocketing the coin. "He's as good as dead."

"Why'd you do that?" demanded Neville, gripping me by the front of my robes.

"The same reason I killed a dozen acromantula in the forbidden forest," I said. "Because he was trying to attack us."

"We don't have time for this," snapped Harry. "Ginny doesn't have time for this. Leave Lockheart here. We'll pick him up on the way back."

Neville stared me down a moment longer, then released me. We proceeded down the tunnel once again. Soon, we came to a dead end with a pair of carved serpents entwined across a blank wall.

"Everyone ready?" asked Harry. When we nodded, he turned to the snakes and hissed, "Open."

The wall split along an invisible seam as the stone snakes animated and disentangled themselves, one ending up on each of the newly revealed double doors. Our now slightly diminished party entered. 

* * *

The Chamber of Secrets was lit by a faint, greenish glow that had no identifiable source. The room itself was massive, its ceiling almost lost in the gloom. Massive stone pillars supported the ceiling, with stone carvings of snakes wrapped around each. At the far end of the chamber stood a massive statue of Salazar Slytherin. Its head was nearly as high as the chamber's ceiling. At its feet was the black robed, red haired, unmoving figure of Ginny Weasley in a crumpled heap.

"Ginny!" called out Ron as he rushed to her. Per the plan, the rest of us fanned out, lining the outer walls of the chamber. After a panicked moment, Ron called out, "Greed, get over here! Ginny's hurt!"

I rushed to Ron's side and put an arm under Ginny's limp, cold body. I felt for a pulse. It was faint, but there. "She isn't dead,: I reported and took my wand in the hand I wasn't using to hold her up and pointed it at her. Blue light shed over Ginny, and her breathing deepened, color started coming back to her cheeks, and her cold body grew warmer.

"Ginny, wake up," begged Ron.

"She won't wake up," came an unfamiliar voice.

We all turned to face a tall, black haired sixteen year old boy in Hogwarts school robes ad wearing a prefect's badge. Harry recognize dhim.

"Tom? Tom Riddle?"

Riddle nodded to Harry and kept his focus on him.

"Are you a ghost?" asked Harry.

"A memory, preserved in a diary or fifty years." He indicated the small, black book lying on the floor near Ginny.

"Harry," said Hermione, urgently, "he's the one who took Ginny. He has to be. He's the only other person down here."

"Clever little mudblood," said Riddle without ever taking his eyes off Harry.

"What did you do to my sister?" demanded Ron, getting to his feet and standing, wand extended, between Riddle and Ginny.

"Well, that's an interesting question," said Riddle, with a quiet smile, "and quite a long story. I suppose the real reason Ginny Weasley's like this is because she opened her heart and spilled all her secrets to an invisible stranger."

"She's still fading," I reported. "It's like her life force is bleeding out through a wound I can't see." I pulled a beozar out of my pocket and forced it down Ginny's throat in case poison was involved with her deteriorating condition.

"It's you!" said Ron, staring hatefully at Riddle. "You brought her here, and you're still hurting her right now." Ron drew a circle in the air with his wand, leaving a trail of orange light behind it.

"And what are you going to do about it, blood traitor?" asked Riddle with amusement at Ron's choice of spell. "Write me a harsh note?"

"Very harsh," said Ron as he completed drawing the transmutation circle in the air and extended his left hand towards it. The array glowed with a brilliant golden light that cut through the chamber's gloom. An orb of light concentrated just in front of the circle as Ron used the same form of alchemy I'd used to kill Quirrell the previous year. A gust of wind with the force of a hurricane burst from the orb of compressed air and launched a surprised Riddle off his feet and slammed him into a column with a bone shattering impact.

Riddle's body flickered translucent for a moment, and he staggered to his feet. As his body solidified again, Ginny's condition worsened dramatically. "Stop!" I called out. "You're hurting Ginny, not him!"

Riddle smiled. There wasn't a hair out of place. Somehow, he'd linked himself to her, and he was draining her like a battery, one I was then recharging.

"Pity you had to warn him," said Riddle with amusement in his voice. "I would have loved to see the look on his face after he realized he killed his baby sister."

"How did you do all this?" asked Harry.

"The diary," said Riddle, proudly. "My diary. Little Ginny's been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes. How her brothers tease her. How she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books. How she did't think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her."

"Incendia!" yelled Hermione, and flames engulfed Riddle's diary. As they faded, the book proved unharmed by the flames.

Riddle kept talking as though nothing had happened. "Its very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven year old girl, but I was patient. I wrote back. I was empathetic. I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. 'No one's ever understood me like you, Tom.' 'I'm so glad I've got this diary to confide in.' 'It's like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket.'"

Riddle laughed. At that moment, the red stone affixed to the tip of my wand reached its limit and shattered into dust. The strain of oxygenating her tissues, elevating her blood pressure, and generally supporting her autonomic functions even as her organs were shutting down used up the energy in my stone quickly. Without missing a beat, I dropped my wand and pulled a second red stone out of my pocket and switched to using that to keep Ginny alive.

"If I say it myself, Harry," continued Riddle, "I've always been able to charm the people I needed. So, Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted. I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets. I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her."

"You possessed her," said Sloth. "You weren't strong enough to manifest like this, but you used her body to open the Chamber and attack the muggleborns."

"And again, the mudblood gets it on the first try," gloated Riddle. "Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries. Far more interesting, they became. 'Dear Tom, I think I'm losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes, and I don't know how they got there.' 'Dear Tom, I can't remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I got paint all down my front.' 'Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I'm pale and not myself. I think he suspects me.' 'There was another attack today and I don't know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I'm going mad.' 'I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!'

"It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary, but she finally became suspicious and tried to dispose of it. And that's where you came in, Harry. You found it, and I couldn't have been more delighted. Of all the people who could have picked it up, it was you, the very person I was most anxious to meet."

"And why did you want to meet me?" asked Harry, keeping him talking. There wasn't much else we could do at this point except keep Riddle talking and hope he'd inadvertently reveal some clue as to how to break this link between him and Ginny. Sloth meanwhile had circled over to me and handed her red stones to me in the hopes they could buy Ginny some more time.

"Well, you see," said Riddle, supremely confident, "Ginny told me all about you, Harry. Your whole fascinating story. I knew I must find out more about you, talk to you, meet you if I could. So, I decided to show you my famous capture of that great oaf, Hagrid, to gain your trust."

Hate caused Harry's voice to tremble as he said, "Hagrid's my friend, and you framed him, didn't you? I thought you made a mistake but..."

Riddle laughed. "It was my word against Hagrid's, Harry. Well, you can imagine how it looked to old Armando Dippet. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student. On the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the forbidden forest to wrestle trolls. But I admit, even I was surprised how well the plan worked. I thought someone must realize that Hagrid couldn't possibly be the Heir of Slytherin. It had taken me five whole years to find out everything I could about the Chamber of Secrets and discover the secret entrance. As though Hagrid had the brains or the power!

"Only the transfiguration teacher, Dumbledore, seemed to think Hagrid was innocent. He persuaded Dippet to keep Hagrid and train him as gamekeeper. Yes, I think Dumbledore might have guessed. Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did."

"I bet Dumbledore saw right through you," jabbed Harry.

"Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled," said Riddle. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was at school, but I wasn't going to waste those long years I'd spent searching for it. I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen year old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"Well you haven't finished it," said Harry. "No one's died this time, note even the cat. We had enough mandrake draught to revive everyone as fast as you could petrify them."

"Haven't I already told you that killing mudbloods doesn't matter to me anymore?" said Riddle in a low voice. "For many months now, my new target has been you. Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it and I repeated all her secrets to you? What if, even worse, I told you who'd been strangling roosters? So, the foolish little brat waited until your dormitory was deserted and stole it back."

"Sounds like you didn't get what you wanted because Ginny didn't trust you after all," said Luna, satisfied.

Ignoring Luna, Riddle pressed on, "But I knew you would go to any lengths to solve the mystery, particularly if your friends were attacked, and Ginny had told me the whole school was buzzing because you could speak parseltongue, so I made Ginny write her own farewell on the wall and come down here to wait. She struggled and cried and became very boring, but there isn't much life left in her. She put too much into the diary, into me. Enough to let me leave its pages at last. I have been waiting for you to appear since we arrived. I knew you'd come. I have many questions for you, Harry Potter."

"Like what?" asked Harry, still stringing him along.

"Well," said Riddle, conversationally, "how is it that you, a skinny boy with no extraordinary magical tallent, managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time? How did you escape with nothing but a scar, while Lord Voldemort's powers were destroyed?"

"Why do you care about how I escaped?" asked Harry. "Voldemort was after your time."

"Voldemort is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter," said Riddle. Using the same spell Ron had used to draw in the air, Riddle wrote his full name, "TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE." Slashing his wand through the words, the letters rearranged themselves into, "I AM LORD VOLDEMORT."

Harry reacted harshly. Pulling the soul coin I'd given him at the beginning of the year in case he encountered Voldemort again from his pocket, Harry threw it at Riddle. It bounced off his chest without reacting. Whatever Riddle's apparition was made of, there wasn't a soul in there, otherwise the alchemy in the coin would've triggered and ripped it out like it had with Lockheart.

"Was that supposed to do something?" asked Riddle. "Oh well, it didn't work." Pointing at the words that still floated in the air, Riddle continued, "You see? It was a name I was already using at Hogwarts, to my most intimate friends only, of course. You think I was going to use my filthy, muggle father's name forever? I, in who's veins runs the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself through my mother's side? I, keep the name of a foul, common muggle who abandoned me before I was born, just because he found out his wife was a witch? No, Harry. I fashioned myself a new name, a name I knew wizards everywhere would one day fear to speak, when I had become the greatest sorcerer in the world!"

"So," said Sloth, with laughter in her voice and a smirk on her face, "the great Lord Voldemort is just a whiny little boy with daddy issues. So, that's what all this muggle hate is about, trying to get back at daddy for abandoning you?"

Riddle's composure failed him, and he screamed, "Adava Kedavra!" through a mask of fury. A jet of green light lanced from his wand and struck Sloth in the chest. Her smirk went slack as she collapsed. He turned back to Harry and started to restore his quiet smile while blue sparks danced over Sloth's body and she stood back up to gasps from Ron, Neville, and Luna.

"You're not," said Harry, causing Riddle to pull his attention from the regenerated Sloth back to Harry.

"Not what?" Riddle demanded.

"Not the greatest sorcerer in the world," said Harry. "Sorry to disappoint you and all that, but the greatest wizard in the world is Albus Dumbledore. Everyone say so. Even when you were strong, you didn't dare try and take over Hogwarts. Dumbledore saw through you when you were at school, and he frightens you now, wherever you're hiding these days."

"Dumbledore has been driven out of this school by the mere memory of me!" hissed Riddle through clenched teeth.

"He's not as gone as you might think!" declared Harry.

Suddenly, music started to sound. Strange and beautiful, it made it feel like everything would turn out alright. Like we could win just because we had right on our side. Flames erupted near the top of one of the pillars and a phoenix appeared. Its golden claws clutched the Hogwarts sorting hat.

The phoenix swooped down and dropped the hat at Harry's feet, and perched on his shoulder. Riddle and the bird stared at one another. After muttering identifications of the hat and Dumbledore's pet phoenix Fawks, Riddle laughed.

"This is what Dumbledore sends his defender? A songbird and an old hat? Do you feel brave, Harry Potter? Do you feel safe now? To business, Harry. Twice in your past, in my future, we have net, and twice I failed to kill you. How did you survive? Tell me everything. The longer you talk, the longer you stay alive."

"You couldn't kill me, shade," taunted Sloth, "why do you think you have what it takes to kill The Boy Who Lived?"

When Riddle raised his wand to silence her, Neville flung a curse at his back. "Petfifucus Totalus!"

Riddle whirled with practiced speed and slashed his wand across the space between himself and Neville. Riddle didn't utter the incantation, but I recognized the wand movement as the shield charm.

Seeing Neville's plan, a rain of curses blasted at Riddle from every direction. Leg locker curse, jelly legs jinx, full body bind, every non-harmful immobilizing curse, hex and jinx Ron, Neville, Luna, and Hermione knew, all struck at him at once. Riddle's reflexes proved impressive, as he twirled his wand this way and that, countering every curse thrown at him. But he wasn't superhuman, and in the face of that onslaught, all he could do was block.

"Enough of this," said Riddle even as he continued to block curses from all sides, "Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin against famous Harry Potter, his little army, and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him."

Riddle looked up at the statue of Slytherin and hissed in parseltongue, "Speak to me, Salazar Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four."

The statue's mouth opened, and a writing mass of scales and coils the same color as the skin we'd found outside was visible within. I forced myself to look away as the basilisk dropped out of the statue's mouth and fell to the floor.

"Kill them," hissed Riddle.

Fawks launched himself off Harry's shoulder towards the basilisk, even as Ron, Luna, and Sloth met the creature's gaze and were petrified. No one was attacking Riddle anymore. For his part, he was content to watch the show, laughing madly.

I wanted to join the fray, but Ginny wasn't stable. There was no telling how long she'd survive without my continuing treatment.

Hermione launched a curse at the basilisk, drawing its attention and getting herself petrified. Neville uncorked a bottle of mandrake draught at his belt and ran to revive the others.

Harry seemed to be trying to work out Dumbledore's plan, and jammed the sorting hat on his head. Fawks seemed to be trying to attack the basilisk, but it weaved out of the way of the phoenix as it slithered around pillars to attack Neville. Evading the gaping maw of the King of Serpents, Neville jammed the bottle of mandrake draught into Ron's mouth, reviving him just in time to be petrified again by the serpent that had been pursuing Neville.

Harry pulled off the sorting hat and drew a ruby pommeled, silver bladed sword. Neville fled the basilisk once again, heading for Luna. Fawks again tried to intercept and distract the snake. Holding the sword in one hand and leaving the hat where it lay, Harry rushed to defend Neville, swinging the blade wildly.

Harry succeeded in blocking the basilisk, but was petrified himself while Neville successfully revived Luna. Riddle let out a cry of glee and hissed new instructions to the basilisk.

"Use your fangs! Finish Harry Potter!"

Neville shoved Luna in Hermione's direction and ran towards Harry as the basilisk reared back and opened its maw of venomous fangs. Fawks swooped down from above as the basilisk hesitated, giving Neville time to revive Harry.

In a moment of madness or inspiration, Harry used his free hand to yank the protective goggles off his face, and he stared right at the massive serpent. The snake's head turned faster than I imagined it could, as though it was suddenly afraid Harry's gaze was deadly.

"Everyone, take off your goggles!" ordered Harry. Luna complied and tossed Hermione's asside as well while she administered the mandrake draught. Neville hesitated, but complied as well after a moment, then moved to restore Ron again.

"What's this?" demanded Riddle.

"It's okay, Fawks," said Harry. "It won't hurt us." Fawks gave a surprised squawk and circled the room, unsure of what was happening. I didn't know nay better than the bird, but I removed my goggles and pulled them off Sloth's petrified form too as I continued to treat Ginny.

"What's going on, Harry?" asked Ron with his eyes clenched shut as Neville revived Sloth.

"We were right about Slytherin. The basilisk doesn't want to kill anybody," said Harry. "We were just making it easier to petrify us harmlessly by wearing the goggles. Without them, it has to decide between killing us and leaving us alone, so it's not attacking at all."

"Kill them!" hissed Riddle. "I am the Heir of Salazar Slytherin and you will obey me!"

"You are a disgrace to the name of Salazar Slytherin," Harry hissed back. "You could never make it kill, could you? Things just kept 'happening' to make it so people were petrified instead. You never considered Slytherin's monster would be trying not to kill."

"You think you know Slytherin's will better than his own descendant?" demanded Riddle.

"Let me guess," said Harry, still in parseltongue, "You stepped into the Chamber of Secrets and Slytherin's basilisk lowered its eyes and you thought that made you his heir. I'll bet it wasn't even the one that killed Myrtle, was it? You killed her yourself after she was petrified, didn't you?"

"Useless beast," hissed Riddle. "But it makes no difference. In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter." Then he was forced to stop talking to block a hex.

"Did you forget about us?" yelled Neville.

While Riddle was again blocking binding hexes, I whistled to Loki, who came to me. Pausing in healing Ginny, I clapped my hands and opened his eyes. "Fetch!" I ordered, and then went back to healing Ginny.

Loki launched himself bodily at Riddle, forcing the others to pause in their hexing attempts. My dog's jaws latched on to the wand in Riddle's hand and wrenched it out of his grip. Then three separate binding curses hit Riddle from three different directions. He was on the ground staring hatefully.

"Now, what to do with this," mused Harry as he stood over Riddle's prone form staring at the sword he'd pulled from the hat.

At that moment, Fawks dropped the diary at Harry's feet. Reversing his grip on the blade, Harry drove it down into the diary. Riddle screamed i agony as his body lost cohesion and the binding spells had nothing to hold on to. Ink spurted out of the diary like blood. Then it was over. Riddle was gone, and the destroyed diary lay inert. Ginny's eyes fluttered open.

"Who-?" she started to ask. Then her eyes found her brother. "Ron!" She hurled herself at him and wrapped her arms around him, sobbing. "Oh, Ron, I tried to tell you at b-breakfast but I c-couldn't say it i front of Percy. It was me, Ron. But I-I swear I d-didn't mean to- R-Riddle made me, he t-took me over. And... w-why isn't that thing attacking? W-where's Riddle? The last thing I remember is him coming out of the diary."

"It's all right, we're here," said Ron, hugging Ginny, his own face wet with tears of relief.

"Riddle's finished," added Harry, holding up the remains of the diary. "Look."

"And the basilisk is on our side now," said Luna, stroking the creature's side affectionately.

"We should go," said Neville.

"Here's your wand," I said, handing Ginny the wand Loki had fetched from Riddle.

"I'm going to be expelled," said Ginny as she started walking. "I've looked forward to coming to Hogwarts ever since B-Bill came, and n-now I'll have to leave and w-what'll mum and dad say?"

"It wasn't your fault," said Sloth. "You were possessed. Nobody blames you." We all nodded our agreement.

We all left the Chamber of Secrets together. In the outer corridor, we found Lockheart's body where we'd left it on the way in.

"Did I-?" asked Ginny.

"No," I said. "I'm the one that did this to him. And however that makes me look, I don't regret it. This man got away with hurting a lot of people and if I hadn't stopped him, he'd have prevented us rescuing you."

"What do we do with him?" asked Ron, nudging him with his foot.

"We take him back up with us," I said. I'll take responsibility and face whatever consequences I have coming."

"How are we going to get back up that pipe?" asked Neville.

"Can you give us a boost?" asked Luna in parseltongue. The basilisk slithered out of the Chamber and pushed us up into Myrtle's bathroom one by one. We bid farewell to the basilisk who returned to its lair and followed Fawks who seemed to know where he was going. He led us to McGonagall's office. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Harry getting the chance to deconstruct Riddle and his arrogance was another of those scenes I really wanted to have. And yes, they're keeping the basilisk.


	16. Chapter 22: New Arrangements

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 22) New Arrangements  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

McGonagall's office contained its owner, along with Molly and Arthur Weasley, and Professor Dumbledore. Fawks swooped over to land on Dumbledore's shoulder.

Molly Weasley pulled Ginny into an embrace, which Arthur joined in. "Ginny! You saved her! You saved her! How did you do it?"

"I think we'd all like to know that," said McGonagall.

Harry launched into an explanation. I butted in and added details where Harry was hesitant, explaining that I'd neutralized Lockheart and why, as well as filling in gaps about Ginny and the diary. The senior Weasleys were starting to scold Ginny for not turning over the diary sooner when Dumbledore interrupted.

"Miss Weasley should go up to the hospital wing right away. This has been a terrible ordeal for her. There will be no punishment. Older and wiser wizards than she have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort. Bed rest and perhaps a large, steaming mug of hot chocolate. I always find that cheers me up."

The Weasleys left with Ginny, leaving our rescue party with Dumbledore and McGonagall.

"You know, Minerva, I think this merits a good feast. Might I ask you to go and alert the kitchens?" asked Dumbledore.

"Right. I'll leave you to deal with them, shall I?" asked McGonagall.

"Certainly," said Dumbledore. When McGonagall had gone, he turned back to us. "Harry, Ron, I seem to remember telling you both that I would have to expel you if you broke any more school rules. Which goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat our words. You will all receive special awards for services to the school and, let me see, yes, I think two hundred points apiece for your houses."

"We need to make some Slytherin friends," I mused. "This is getting really unfair to them."

"I will be speaking to the Wizangemot on your behalf about Gilderoy," said Dumbledore. "In the meantime, can the rest of you help take him up to the infirmary? I'd like a few more words with Harry."

We complied and delivered Lockheart's soulless but still alive body to Madam Pomfrey. At the feast, it was announced that Dumbledore had been restored to headmaster, Lockheart wouldn't be returning next year, and that exams were being canceled. Hagrid arrived back from Azkaban during the feast and joined right in, thanking us all for proving his innocence.

In the final week of classes, I learned that by "speak to the Wizangemot on my behalf" Dumbledore meant "wield sufficient political influence to ensure that the effective death of a wizard famous enough to make front page news at book signings wouldn't even go to trial." It made me wonder about what the man had done after Quirrell had died. It had apparently taken a massive amount of political maneuvering, including blackmail, as well as the presence of a younger copy of the most feared dark lord in history just to make the man step down as headmaster. And even then, it didn't stick.

Harry'd apparently turned the magic sword he pulled from the hat over to Dumbledore for safekeeping. Meanwhile, Harry was particularly proud of having deduced that Lucius Malfoy had been behind getting Riddle's diary into Ginny Weasley's hands. After working it out, he tricked Lucius into freeing Dobby, the house elf slave that had spent the year warning Harry about the Chamber.

* * *

Debarking the Hogwarts Express at Platform 9 3/4, Sloth, Loki, and I stuck very close to Harry. Before stepping through the barrier back to the muggle world, Harry got out a quill and parchment and started scratching out numbers.

"What's that?" I asked.

"This is called a phone number," said Harry as he continued writing. "I can't stand another two months with only Dudley to talk to."

"Harry," said Sloth, "you don't have to go back to those muggles."

Harry dropped his writing implements and stared.

"We talked it over after hearing about your last summer with the Dursleys," I said, putting an arm around Sloth's shoulder. "We want you to come stay with us for the summer. For however many summers you need until you're ready to be out on your own."

"Come live with you?" said Harry in a low voice, almost to himself. Then louder and more firmly, "Of course I want that. Where are you staying? Have you got a house? Can I move in directly or-?"

"We want to have a word with your aunt and uncle first," I said. When Harry looked crestfallen, I added, "Whatever they say doesn't change our offer. Meanwhile, you'd better get Hermione's phone number instead. If you don't get an owl or a call in the next few days, I'm counting on you to come and rescue Harry."

Ron and Hermione grinned and nodded to each other. Hermione retrieved the quill and parchment Harry'd dropped, jotted down her number, and returned the implements to Harry. Then, she and Ron departed.

Flanking Harry, Sloth and I stepped through the barrier and scanned the crowd for Harry's relatives. A large, fat man with a mustache and an aggrieved look on his face was glancing around the train station. He spotted Harry and stalked over to where we were standing.

"You must be Harry's uncle," I said pleasantly, concealing my disdain for the child abuser.

The man's face went red with suppressed rage, seemingly triggered by my addressing him. He proceeded to pointedly ignore me, and said to Harry, "Get in the car, boy. I'm not about to waste my time standing about, chatting with your kind."

"Actually, you should probably listen to him," suggested Harry. "He's got good news."

"We want to take Harry for the summer," I said.

"You asked at Christmas if I'd be able to spend the summer at Hogwarts," Harry reminded him. "This is the next best thing."

"Why did you make me waste my time coming out here if you managed to find someone else to put up with your... behavior?" demanded Vernon Dursley.

"We still need to pick up the rest of Harry's things," said Sloth. Harry looked confused for a moment and about to speak, but Vernon beat him to it.

"The boy's already stolen everything he's getting from my house! He's lucky I'm not sending along a bill for the damages when his little friends broke his bedroom window on their way out!"

Vernon stormed off, and Harry had the biggest grin I'd ever seen on him.

"So, where are we going?" he asked.

"I'll call us a cab," I said. "Hotel the first night while I work out the arrangements. We should have a permanent place tomorrow."

"You really don't have any more stuff than you took to Hogwarts?" asked Sloth.

Harry looked embarrassed. "I told you the Dursleys hate me."

"It's just, Greed and I travel a lot. I'm not used to having more stuff than other people." 

* * *

Sloth and Harry were helping one another with their summer homework for History of Magic when I returned to the hotel room. All the arrangements had been made. Having a limitless supply of money simplified everything, no matter what world you were in.

"Who- Greed? Is that you?" asked Harry when I entered.

"Shape shifters, remember?" I reminded him as I closed the door. I'd reverted to my adult form to handle the house hunting.

"Right," said Harry. "It's just weird seeing you like this."

"It's a good thing we can do it," said Sloth. "I've done the whole living on your own as a kid thing. It's so much easier this way."

"So how old are you guys really?" asked Harry.

"Time flows sort of strangely between worlds," I noted, "But I'm a little over thirty."

"For me, it depends on how you count," said Sloth. "I was created about five years ago, but I was made as a replacement for another girl who died at four. I have her memories."

"So either way, you're actually younger than me," said Harry, surprised.

"Speaking of which," I said, pulling the coin to which I'd bound Lockheart's soul out of my pocket, "are you ready to see if my theory on soul attachment works and confuse the question of your age even further?"

"When we get to the new house," said Sloth, shaking her head. "If it works, I know we'll want to test it out right away, and there's a specific transmutation I want for my first."

* * *

The next day, Harry, Sloth, Loki, and I loaded into the brand new car I'd purchased the previous day and we pulled out of the hotel parking lot. Harry's owl Hedwig was in a cage next to him in the back seat.

"Once we're unpacked, you should send Hedwig off to Ron and Hermione so they don't worry," I said as I turned a corner onto Privet Drive.

"What are we doing here?" demanded Harry, tensing up. He seemed to be considering jumping out of the moving vehicle from the way his eyes darted to the door handle.

"I bought the house next door to where you were living," I said, pulling into the driveway.

"Why?" asked Harry. "Why would you take me back here?"

"You weren't the only child in the Dursley household," I said. "I wanted to be close enough to keep an eye on how they're treating Dudley."

"You think they'd do anything to Dudley?" asked Harry, laughing. "They give him everything he wants and have never so much as scolded him that I've seen."

"But now they don't have the punching bag they've used to vent their aggression the last twelve years," said Sloth.

Harry was silent for a long moment, then asked, "Do you really think they'd hurt him?"

"If we were sure, we'd be getting him out right now too," said Sloth.

Moving in was a simple matter, what with having three trunks worth of possessions, mostly school supplies, and two pets between us. We selected bedrooms, and Harry warned us to be careful with our curtains, since his aunt Petunia loved to spy on the neighbors. Hedwig was sent out carrying letters to Ron and Hermione explaining his current living situation and providing our phone number.

No sooner had Hedwig taken flight than there was a knock at our front door. At the front door stood Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"Professor Dumbledore," I said, blinking with surprise, "please come in. Er, would you like some tea?"

"Yes, that would be lovely. Thank you, Greed." Professor Dumbledore entered and took a seat in the living room.

I went to the kitchen and filled four cups with tap water then waved my wand over them, transmuting the water into steaming hot tea. I brought the cups out and distributed them.

"What's this about, Professor?" asked Harry when we'd all taken a sip.

Sighing deeply and with none of the playfulness or youthful vigor he usually projected, Dumbledore turned to Harry and said, "You have to go back to your aunt and uncle."

"No," said Harry.

"Why?" demanded Sloth at the same time.

"They are your legal guardians," explained Dumbledore.

"They're abusive monsters who're glad they don't have him around anymore," I countered. "You don't put children in solitary confinement."

"You still want to send him back there?" asked Sloth after a moment of silence.

"What I want has very little to do with it," said Dumbledore. "There is no choice in the matter."

"What do you mean, no choice?" asked Harry.

Dumbledore looked around the room at the three of us, considered for a long moment, then said, "It concerns the threat of Lord Voldemort. Harry, do you recall how I told you about your mother's sacrifice?"

Harry nodded. "She died to protect me, and doing that meant Voldemort couldn't kill me when I was a baby and he can't touch me now."

"That's right," acknowledged Dumbledore. "It's very old, very powerful magic, and because of that act of sacrifice, committed out of pure love, I was able to weave an additional protection into the magic. So long as you dwelt in the home of someone who share your mother's blood, you would be safe. That's why you were sent to live there in the first place."

"How do you maintain a magic based on selfless love by sticking him with people who hate him?" I asked skeptically.

"Petunia may have taken Harry in grudgingly, unwillingly, but she did take him in," explained Dumbledore. "Harry, as long as you could call your aunt's household home, the protections would stand, but you must actually dwell there."

"What exactly are those protections?" asked Sloth. "They certainly don't seem to keep him safe from his relatives."

"Lord Voldemort cannot cross the threshold, nor can any who would act in his name, or at his orders. A degree of safety, I'm sure you've noticed, that I cannot guarantee even at Hogwarts."

"So, I really do have to go back," said Harry, disappointed. "The Dursleys are bad, but they're better than Voldemort."

"Hold on," I said. "Harry spends most of the year at Hogwarts as it is. How long does he need to stay at the Dursleys to maintain the protections?"

"You would only need to stay a single night each year," said Dumbledore, "but while you are out of the house, obviously you are not enjoying its protections. At Hogwarts, I offer what protection I am capable of. When you stayed with the Weasleys last summer, they provided protection."

"And staying here," I added, "he'll be protected by two immortal, superhuman master alchemists, and he'll be close enough to flee next door behind the wards if an attack happens."

"One night a year unless there's an actual emergency," considered Harry aloud.

"We can talk to your aunt and uncle about the details," said Sloth. "You don't have to be there if you don't want to."

"If I have to stay the night with them at some point anyway, I might as well come along and get it out of the way now," said Harry.

I stood up and indicate the door. "Shall we go?"

Sloth stood up, adopting her adult appearance as she did so. The four of us walked next door, and Dumbledore knocked on the Dursleys' front door. Vernon opened it, and immediately gritted his teeth. A thin woman stood behind him, presumably Harry's aunt Petunia.

"What're you doing back here, boy?" demanded Vernon. "Your little plan to run off with your friends fall through?"

"We're still happy to host Harry as long as he needs it," said Sloth, placing a hand on Harry's shoulder.

"Trust me, we aren't any happier having to have this conversation than you are," I added.

"Professor Dumbledore can explain better than I can," said Harry, "but basically I still have to stay here one night a year."

Turning to Dumbledore, Vernon declared, "So, you're the one running that school. This is your doing, no doubt."

"Actually," replied Dumbledore pleasantly, "I was in favor of returning Harry here for the full summer. Family is important after all."

"Look," I said, eager to get this over with, "the evil wizard who killed Harry's parents is still out there. If you let Harry stay one night a year, it'll renew the magic that keeps him out."

"What's this nonsense?" asked Vernon, his face reddening.

"One night a year," I emphasized. "The rest of the time, you can pretend we don't exist. You and your family will be the ones getting the most out of this protection."

"We wouldn't need protection if it weren't for your kind," said Vernon, smugly, as though he thought that won him the argument.

"He can stay," said Petunia in a small voice, drawing everyone's attention.

"You know the trouble the boy causes," argued Vernon. "We were lucky to get rid of him."

"My sister and her husband died fighting this man," said Petunia. "If it means keeping you and Dudley safe from the likes of him, Harry could stay here the rest of his life."

"I am afraid," said Dumbledore, "that once Harry comes of age, the ward will fall in any case."

Sloth looked at the couple and said, "You've both managed to exceed my expectations. Neither of you care about Harry at all, except in how it benefits you. Even then, you're barely willing to look out for your own interests out of spite. It almost makes me appreciate my father." She turned and left.

"If you do anything else to hurt Harry while he's here, you'll answer for it," I promised.

"Do I look like the kind of man who can be intimidated?" blustered Vernon Dursley.

My upper lip curled into a sneer, revealing the pointed teeth of my homunculus form. Vernon took a step backward in fright. "One night a year," I repeated. "If you can't restrain yourselves even that long, I'll have to reconsider whether maintaining the wards is worth it."

"I shall see you at the start of the term, Harry," said Dumbledore, who promptly disappeared with a popping noise.

Looking at me, Harry said, "Don't worry. I managed eleven years here. I can manage one night."

I nodded and left, returning to the house we'd purchased next door.

* * *

"He'll be okay," I said, crossing the threshold of our newly purchased home. "They won't dare harm Harry knowing we'll come after them."

"I know," replied Sloth. "He's dealing with them better than I could. At least he knows full well they don't love him."

"Well, they can't directly tamper with his memories to make themselves look good," I replied. "On to happier subjects. Are you ready for your soul?" I again took the soul coin I'd used on Lockheart out of my pocket.

Sloth let out a deep breath and shape shifted back into her true black haired, pale skinned, purple eyed, four year old homunculus form. "I'm ready."

Sloth laid face down on the couch, providing easy access to the oroboros mark on her shoulder blade. I pressed the coin to her mark, and the array on the visible side of the coin flared red for an instant, then went dark.

"It should be done," I reported. "How do you feel?"

Sloth sat up, a curious look on her face. "I don't feel any different. I probably didn't need to be laying down. I didn't feel a thing. Let's find out if it worked."

"The most important thing, whether it worked or not, is that you're okay," I said, following her outside to the front yard.

Sloth smiled at me, then clapped her hands. "Edward showed Nina this transmutation during their brief time together. She was awed, and wanted more than anything to learn to do that too when she grew up. I'm not Nina, but..."

She got to her knees and pressed her palms to the ground. Blue light poured from the earth, confirming our experiment had worked. Small white flowers grew and intertwined, forming a ring which Sloth picked up and placed on her head like a crown. Giddy with her first successful use of alchemy without a stone, Sloth skipped back into the house, dug her wand out of her trunk, and applied a complex array similar to the one on my wand.

"Now that you're a proper alchemist," I said, smiling at Sloth, "how about you give me a hand redecorating the place?"

* * *

Author's comments:  
No one was going to just forget what happened to Harry at the start of the year. Harry gets to properly work out his priorities regarding Voldemort versus the Dursleys in full knowledge of the consequences for a change.


	17. Chapter 24: Aunt Marge and Sirius Black

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 24) Aunt Marge and Sirius Black  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Harry returned to us no worse for his evening with the Dursleys. Letters came in from Ron and Hermione, followed by phone calls. It took a few tries to convince Ron to speak normally into the receiver instead of shouting, but he eventually got the hang of it. Ron told us that he'd shown off his alchemy ability, and it had made front page news in the Daily Prophet. He promised to send us a clipping.

Visiting Ron and Hermione this summer was out of the question, since both were spending the holiday abroad. Hermione's family was visiting France and Ron was using his newfound wealth to take his family to visit his older brother Bill, who was a curse breaker in Egypt. Ron confided his hope that seeing Bill would be good for Ginny after what happened last term.

"So, Harry," I said, looking up from my history of magic textbook as evening approached, "once the three of us have finished up our summer homework, what do you feel like doing?"

"Ron's family's off in Egypt," said Harry cautiously, "but the practice field near the Burrow's still there. Do you think there'd be a problem heading out there and doing some flying?"

"Sounds fun," said Sloth. "I can try out my new broom."

It took us about a week to finish up our homework. Harry was having some trouble with Snape's essay on shrinking solutions, so the three of us went down to the basement lab and brewed one of each type so we could observe the effects firsthand. A trip to the muggle library helped us supplement our history of magic essays on the pointlessness of witch burnings. Not that I was convinced Professor Binns was aware enough of the students to really read our essays anyway.

Our homework done, the three of us loaded into the car with Hedwig and Loki, tossed our broomsticks in the back, and headed for the Quidditch field. Hedwig circled overhead while Harry mounted his top of the line racing broom, and Sloth and I mounted our alchemy-based equivalents.

Sloth's and my broomsticks trailed streaks of blue light as we chased Harry through the sky in an impromptu game of tag. Sloth's staying power using alchemy was improving, but after half an hour, she had to land, panting with exhaustion.

"Did you want to use a red stone to keep going?" I asked Sloth, pulling one out of my pocket.

"Maybe in a few minutes," she said, leaning against a tree. "Harry, do you mind if I try your broom?"

"Sure," said Harry, holding his broomstick out to Sloth, "but I thought you guys couldn't use regular brooms. That's why you made those."

"I attached Lockheart's soul to my body," explained Sloth. "I'd have asked to borrow your wand to check if that let me do magic, but underage magic would get us in trouble if it worked."

"And the broomstick has the same requirements, but doesn't count as underage magic," said Harry.

"Right," replied Sloth. Then, "Up!"

The broomstick stayed on the ground. After a few more tries, we were forced to conclude that the soul attachment hadn't done the job. Whatever the key to giving us magic of our own was, we'd have to keep looking. Putting aside her disappointment, Sloth accepted the red stone and got back on her broom.

We came back out to the Quidditch field every day for the next four weeks. Harry took us through the drills that the Gryffindor Quidditch captain Olliver Wood ran. We each tried our hand at all four Quidditch positions, chaser, keeper, beater, and seeker. Under Harry's instruction, we improved immensely. Harry started lobbying we try for our House teams when the term started back up.

* * *

Harry's birthday had arrived. Waiting for him in the kitchen when he came downstairs for breakfast was a large sheet cake with "Happy Birthday Harry," written in frosting and thirteen unlit candles. I held up my right hand and a transmutation circle drew itself on the back. It was a modified flame alchemy array I'd been tinkering with, incorporating some of the chemistry advances this world's muggles had discovered. It turned out a highly unstable nitrogen based compound could be produced from common atmospheric elements that was explosive enough that a few molecules positioned between the fingers could completely obliviate the need for an ignition cloth glove. I snapped, and all thirteen candles lit at once.

Sloth and I sange and encourage Harry to blow out the candles. Giving additional confirmation the Dursleys were horrible people, Harry responded like someone who had seen this ritual performed before, but had never actually been at the center of it. We avoided calling attention to it.

Hedwig's timing was remarkable, leading a small group of owls in through the kitchen window just as Harry blew out the candles. Birthday cards and presents had arrived from Hagrid, Ron, and Hermione, as had Hogwarts letters for all three of us.

"Have a look," said Harry, passing a newspaper clipping from the Daily Prophet that Ron had included with his card. The photo showed Ron seated at a table with Scabbers perched on his shoulder. In front of a large crowd of witches and wizards, Ron took oddly shaped lumps of dark colored metal, many of them pipe fittings, and put them in a cauldron. Alchemic light poured from the cauldron and he withdrew a light colored ingot and added it to a stack. The headline read, "Hogwarts Student Surpasses World's Greatest Alchemists. Turns Lead Into Gold Without A Philosopher's Stone."

"Good for him," I said, quickly reading over the article.

Harry showed off his birthday gift from Ron. It was a small glass top called a sneakoscope. It would light up and spin when someone untrustworthy was around. Ron had picked it up in Egypt. Ron apparently was keeping the fact that Harry's life was regularly endangered in mind.

Hermione's gift was equally thoughtful, if less practical. She'd sent Harry a broomstick servicing kit he could use to maintain his racing broom.

Hagrid's package moved when Harry went to open it. The three of us gathered close to see what it was. Hagrid wasn't the sort of person to stuff a living creature in a gift wrapped box with no air holes. He'd barely consented to crating Norbert the dragon for transport. Harry pulled aside the wrapping paper to reveal a book. One with a vicious, personality that tried to snap shut on our fingers like a pair of jaws.

Loki growled threateningly at the Monster Book of Monsters, and seemed on the verge of transforming when the three of us managed ot tackle the book and flatten it to the table. I quickly transmuted a strap to bind it shut, though it continued to struggle against the restraint.

"Hagrid's card said it would come in handy this year," said Harry, baffled.

"Between your new sneakoscope and this book," I said, "you shouldn't have to worry about people going through your stuff again."

"No one would dare," agreed Sloth.

"Have I mentioned how irritating it is that Ginny could just walk into Harry's dorm?" I asked. "Why would they only put a gender alarm on the girls' stairwell?"

"Hermione did say wizards are bad at logic," reminded Sloth. "Obviously someone got it into their head that girls aren't interested in boys."

All together, the three of us opened our Hogwarts letters. I had quite a book list thanks to my five electives this year. On it was the Monster Book of Monsters. Either that was for Defense Against the Dark Arts or Care of Magical Creatures. I was also vaguely pleased that it was finally time to update my transfiguration textbook, having mastered the content of the beginning book. It would have been in poor taste to say, but even with all my extra classes, I still needed fewer books than last year thanks to Lockheart exploiting his teaching position to boost his book sales. I still didn't feel bad about ripping out his soul.

The envelopes also contained a permission slip. For the first time, we would be allowed to visit the village of Hogsmeade near the school on certain weekends. As I understood it, the only all wizard settlement in the British Isles. Everywhere else they hid in the cracks of muggle society. Seeing what wizards were like when they were living openly would be fascinating. It was bound to make Diagon Alley look mundane.

There was only one problem, and glancing up to see the others staring at their slips, we were all thinking the same thing. To actually go on the Hogsmeade weekend trips, we needed the signature of a parent or guardian.

"I just told the Dursleys we didn't have to have anything more to do with each other," said Harry.

On cue, there was a knock at our front door. Going to answer it, we blinked in surprise at the presence of Vernon Dursley. Spying the large birthday cake in the kitchen, he huffed and seemed to hold back a biting comment. Unpracticed as he was at doing so, the process looked painful.

"I need your help," were the words Vernon managed to force out through gritted teeth.

"Biwfdays work the othew way awound," said Sloth, affecting Nina's speech impediment as she pretended to be a normal four year old innocently correcting a mistake. "Youw supposed to give Hawy Pwesants not ask him fow things."

"She has a point," I noted, leaning casually against the door frame. "You haven't even wished Harry a happy birthday yet."

Harry called us off with a gesture and approached Vernon, holding his permission slip. "Third years at Hogwarts are allowed to visit the village sometimes."

"So?" snapped Vernon, forgetting he'd arrived at our door hat in hand.

"I need you to sign the permission form. You do that, and I'll help with whatever you came over about int he first place."

Considering, Vernon curtly nodded, then explained. "Marge'll be here for a week. If you come back for the week, avoid any funny stuff, and don't let on you've moved out, I'll sign your ruddy form."

"Aunt Marge?" asked Harry with a shocked expression. "She's coming?"

"I was about to pick her up at the train station when I remembered what we'd told her about you," confirmed Vernon.

"Or rather that you hadn't told her you treated him so badly he left," I challenged.

Ignoring me, Vernon said, "We need to get a few things straight if you want your form signed. Firstly, you'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you're talking to Marge. Secondly, as Marge doesn't know anything about your abnormality, I don't want any-any funny stuff while she's here. You behave yourself, got me? And thirdly, we've told Marge you attend St. Brutus' Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys."

"What?" demanded Harry in a tone so loud and so outraged Loki turned back his ears and growled threateningly. Vernon got to watch the friendly brown dog light up with blue light beneath his fur and a ring of red around his neck. Three hundred pounds of precision engineered, military grade chimera continued to threateningly growl at Vernon Dursley. I'd seen those armored green scales take a hit from the equivalent of a tank round before, and those claws had severed limbs without slowing their swing.

"You see?" blustered Vernon as he quickly assessed that the three of us standing in the door were between him and Loki. "This is exactly the sort of nonsense you have to cut out with Marge here."

I carefully guided Loki forward, with a restraining hand on his golden, leonine mane. "You don't have to put up with him, Harry," I said. "Let him try and weasel out of his lies to Marge on his own." Vernon had fallen silent with the growling chimera now being held back only by my gentle touch.

Harry took a steeling breath and said, "No, I'll do it."

"If it gets to be too much, or if you need anything, we'll be right here," declared Sloth. Then, placing a hand on Loki's mane, "All of us."

Vernon swallowed and scurried back next door while Harry started sorting out the details. Sloth and I agreed readily to take care of Hedwig and to let Ron and Hermione know what he was about to do. After seeing Harry next door, I stepped in our front yard and stomped a foot, using the array on my sole to so perfectly grow and manicure our lawn that the Dursleys' next door looked unkempt and shabby by comparison.

* * *

The week hadn't passed when Harry burst into our living room in a panic. Angry yelling was coming from next door.

"We have to go! We have to get our trunks and go!" said Harry, his face flushed with a mixture of panic and outrage.

"What happened?" I asked as I followed Harry's instructions and grabbed my trunk.

"I blew up aunt Marge," said Harry, pulling his trunk toward the garage.

"You what?!" asked Sloth and I in unison.

"She was insulting my parents, and I got bad, and she blew up like a balloon, and now the Ministry of Magic will be coming, and I'll be expelled, and maybe go to jail-"

"Harry," I interrupted sharply. "Is Marge still alive?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted.

"I'm going over there," I said. "Sloth, bring Harry downstairs. If the Ministry wants to make an issue of it, we're better defended on our own territory than out in the open."

Loki tagged along with me as I ran next door towards the angry yelling. On entering, I saw Vernon trying to pull the grotesquely inflated Marge off the ceiling while a bulldog tore at his pant leg. Petunia had retrieved a broom and was trying to use it to keep Marge steady. Dudley was cowering behind a table.

"YOU!" yelled Vernon on spotting me. "YOU PUT HER RIGHT THIS INSTANT!"

Marge's eyes were moving, and there was some voluntary motion in her fingertips. It was a good sign. If the transformation had killed her, there would be nothing I could have done. As it was, this would just be immensely difficult and complicated alchemy on a living human. I pulled out my wand and pointed.

"All three of you, get to the corner," I ordered. Dudley complied immediately, followed by Petunia. Vernon looked like he was about to object, so I added, "Fixing her is as complicated as normal reconstructive surgery, and I don't need you distracting me."

The bulldog was surprisingly less willing to listen to reason, so Loki forced him out of my way. Channeling power through the red stone on my wand, blue light emanated from the wand and from the woman. Lighter than air gasses were transmuted back into heavy bone and muscle, and I was able to keep her breathing throughout the entire process, and disrupt any pain signals her nerves would be transmitting.

When my work was done, I initially worried I'd made a mistake, as the resulting appearance was far too close to Vernon's own, but the others didn't say anything about it. While I was trying to come up with something to tell her, the door opened and two wizards entered, escorting Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic.

"Put the wand down," instructed one of the wizards. I complied.

"Minister Fudge?" I asked, baffled. "What are you doing here?"

"Checking up on a report of underage magic. And you are?"

"Marcus Oren, Sr," I said.

"And what are you doing here?" asked Fudge.

"Harry Potter had a bit of uncontrolled magic. I came here to set it right."

"And where is Harry?" asked Fudge.

"Is he in trouble?" I asked.

"Over a bit of underage magic that's already been set right? Hardly. I do want to know what you have to do with the boy."

"My son is one of Harry's classmates. When it happened, he came to him for help."

"I don't believe I've heard of your family," noted Fudge.

"We're not originally from here," I explained. "We moved from Amestris so my son could go to Hogwarts. We're actually right next door if you want to talk to Harry."

"I'll do that. Can the two of you manage the cleanup here while I go talk to Harry?"

They nodded and I led the Minister of Magic next door, Loki coming along. I nodded to one of the cameras and offered Fudge a seat and some tea. Sloth and Harry entered the room cautiously.

"There you are, Harry. I am Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. You've had us all in a right flap, I don't mind telling you. I'd thought that... but you're safe and that's what matters."

"You thought what?" I asked.

"It's just that, in the present circumstances, hostile magics going off in Harry's home, well, we didn't really expect a simple case of underage magic, and we're relieved that's all it was."

"Is Harry in danger?" I asked. "More so than he usually is just for being the Boy Who Lived, I mean."

"Er, well, you see..." started Fudge, his eyes flitting between Harry and Sloth.

"Harry has a right to know if he's in danger," I said, "and I don't keep secrets from Nina."

"Oh, very well," said Fudge. "You've heard about the Sirius Black breakout?"

"No," said Harry.

"We need to get a Daily Prophet subscription," noted Sloth.

"Yes, well, Sirius Black was one of You-Know-Who's top supporters. He escaped from Azkaban and we believe he may come after Harry over what happened to You-Know-Who. Now, I don't want to worry you unnecessarily. Black will be recaptured. It's only a matter of time. The Azkaban guards have never yet failed, and they're angrier than I've ever seen them." Fudge involuntarily shuddered at the thought.

"Well, in any case," said Fudge, "I'm sure you'll understand why we'd like you to stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas and Easter holidays."

"I always stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas and Easter holidays," said Harry. "What about my punishment?"

"Punishment?" asked Fudge.

"I broke the law. The Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry."

"Oh, my dear boy, we're not going to punish you for a little thing like that. It was an accident. We don't send people to Azkaban just for blowing up their aunts."

"What do you send people to Azkaban for?" I asked. "What did Sirius Black do?"

Fudge sighed and said, "Sirius Black famously murdered a dozen muggles with a single curse. When he was found, he was actually laughing among the bodies, or rather, what was left of them."

"We'll make sure Harry's safe," I said. "We knew Voldemort's shade might be coming after him when we agreed to let him stay."

After a few final pleasantries, Fudge left. Harry noted that they must be very worried about Black indeed to overlook what had happened to Marge, given that last year they threatened to expel him after Dobby had levitated some pudding.

The next couple of weeks before we were to meet Ron and Hermione in Diagon Alley we continued to visit the Quidditch field. That wasn't to say we weren't taking Black's threat seriously. Harry wouldn't be able to use magic to practice defense, so instead I muffled the noise around the field with alchemy, set up some targets, and got started showing Harry how to use a gun.

* * *

On the appointed day, we piled into the car and headed to London. Sloth and I adopted our thirteen year old Hogwarts student appearances as we got out of the car. Deciding to keep an eye out for the others while we shopped, we'd gotten all our new books (and tied up the two new monster books) and our new robes before spotting Ron and Hermione outside an ice cream parlor. They also had their new books. We must've missed each other.

Both excitedly asked about the incident with Marge before the conversation drifted toward out new school things. Ron was eager to show off his new Firebolt broomstick. Harry was in awe of the professional grade racing broom and Ron went over the features and professional teams that had ordered them. When Harry expressed jealousy, Ron puffed up and told him not to worry.

"Remember how Malfoy bought his way onto the Slytherin team last year with those Nimbus 2001s? I donated a full set of seven Firebolts to the Gryffindor team. That'll show him."

"Wood'll be over the moon," noted Harry.

"I guess that just leaves Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff without wealthy sponsors," noted Sloth. "What do you say we even the playing field, Greed?"

"It would be nice to get the game back to talent versus talent," I said.

"You two go ahead," said Hermione. "I've still got ten galleons. It's my birthday in September and Mum and Dad gave me some money to get myself an early birthday presant."

"Where do we meet?" asked Sloth.

"I really want an owl," said Hermione. "I mean Harry's got Hedwig, Ron's got Erol-"

"I haven't. Erol's a family owl, and he's being retired from deliveries. All I've got is Scabbers, and I want to get him checked over. I don't think Egypt agreed with him."

The owner of Quality Quidditch Supplies looked at Sloth and I skeptically when we asked for seven Firebolts apiece. His look shifted to greed when I started stacking galleons on the table and suggested he tell me when to stop. We had them shipped to Hogwarts as an anonymous donation to our respective House teams.

Harry and Ron were right outside the shop when we exited, coaxing Scabbers out from under a waste basket.

"What was that?" asked Ron.

"It was either a very big cat or quite a small tiger," said Harry dryly.

"What's going on?" asked Sloth.

"At the pet store, this huge cat tried to eat Scabbers," explained Ron, stroking the panicking rat to calm him down.

"Are we still meeting outside the creatures shop?" I asked.

"Yeah," said Harry. "Hermione's probably getting her owl now."

We arrived in time to see Hermione leaving the shop without an owl and carrying a large orange cat.

"You bought that monster?" demanded Ron, holding a hand over the pocket he'd put Scabbers in protectively.

"He's gorgeous isn't he?" asked Hermione.

"Hermione, that thing nearly scalped me!" said Ron.

"He didn't mean to, did you, Crookshanks?" purred Hermione.

"And what about Scabbers?" demanded Ron. "He needs rest and relaxation. How's he going to get it with that thing around?"

Hermione produced a bottle and handed it to Ron. "That reminds me, you forgot your rat tonic. And stop worrying. Crookshanks will be sleeping in my dormitory and Scabbers in yours. What's the problem? Poor Crookshanks. That witch said he'd been in there for ages. No one wanted him."

"I wonder why..." said Ron sarcastically.

Loki sniffed at the cat, who purred in greeting. We all headed to Diagon Alley's main tavern, the Leaky Cauldron, where Hermione was staying with the Weasleys. Harry, Sloth, and I got rooms as well, agreeing to head to the Hogwarts Express together the next day. The Ministry of Magic was providing transportation and security. No one wanted to say it, but it was obviously to protect Harry from Sirius Black.

At some point in the night, Harry overheard Arthur and Molly Weasley talking about Black. It was more than speculation he was after Harry. Apparently, the guards reported Black had been talking in his sleep before the breakout, muttering, "He's at Hogwarts." Harry relayed this to Ron, Hermione, Sloth, and I over breakfast using parseltongue to avoid our conversation being overheard at the crowded table. 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Accepting the butterfly effect of the first two books, there was no way the sweepstakes drawing was going to play out the same way it did originally. Fortunately, Ron now has an entirely different reason to be in the papers.


	18. Chapter 25: Gain and Loss

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 25) Gain and Loss  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The Ministry's drivers were terrible. They weaved through gaps too narrow to accommodate their cars, using magic to get things out of their way and put them back in place where they'd passed, including trees and telephone poles. I'd have felt safer in Arthur Weasley's flying car. That thing at least knew how to avoid obstacles. Sure, I wouldn't die in a car crash, but it'd still hurt.

The Hogwarts Express was already quite crowded when we arrived, since despite their deranged driving, the Ministry drivers still arrived later than I generally liked to. As a result, Sloth and I broke off from the others to find a compartment. Luckily, we found one with Ginny, Luna, and Neville inside and were invited to join them. We went ahead and shared the summer's news, including what we knew about the Sirius Black escape.

"It's scary," said Neville. "No one's ever escaped from Azkaban before. Who knows what else Black's capable of?"

"Is there anything we can do to protect Harry?" asked Ginny. Blushing, she added, "After last year, it'd be nice to be on the other side of that."

"You were under mind control," said Sloth. "No one blames you for what happened."

"I do," replied Ginny.

"Then what do you way we make sure it never happens again?" I suggested.

"What do you mean?" asked Ginny.

"It's called Occlumency," I explained. "It's a skill for keeping unwanted intrusions out of your mind. I was planning on teaching our little parseltongue club this year, since at least Harry and Ron definitely need it."

"How do you know occlumency?" asked Neville.

"Dumbledore taught me and Sloth first year because we know how to make a Philosopher's Stone," I replied. "No one wants that knowledge to fall into the wrong hands."

"If you ever need to talk about what happened, Ginny," said Sloth seriously, "I've been through something similar. Before I came to Hogwarts..."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Are you okay?" asked Ginny.

"I wasn't as lucky as you were," admitted Sloth. "I was made to do things I can't take back. That said, I've learned to live with it."

"You know," said Luna, "if it doesn't bring back to many bad memories, we can teach you parseltongue too. You weren't the only one Riddle manipulated last year, and I'll bet you and the basilisk would have a lot to talk about."

The conversation drifted from there. The Honeydukes cart came by and I treated everyone to their choice of sweets. Hours later I was explaining my system of using Chocolate Frog cards to keep track of what happened when in History of Magic when the train slowed, then jolted to a stop. As it happened, the lights went out. I lit my wand and the others followed suit.

"Have we broken down?" asked Sloth.

"No idea," replied Ginny.

Before we could question further, the door to our compartment opened and a tall, black cloaked figure entered. As the figure drew a breath that sounded like a death rattle, the temperature dropped and I could feel a psychic intrusion. My occlumency training was utterly useless in stopping it, but allowed me to perceive, in detail, what was happening. Happy thoughts and memories were being drawn out of my mind towards that breath, as though whatever was beneath the cloak were a black hole of joy.

Left within me, were all my worst memories, now competing only with one another for my attention. I heard the screams of the dying in Liore, and saw the people being torn apart by the alchemy I had known was coming and hadn't stopped. Through a haze of guilt and remembered pain, I was vaguely aware that I'd collapsed to the ground. The figure leaned over me and pulled back its hood, revealing a face like a decayed corpse, lacking eyes, but possessing scabbed over sockets, and with a gaping hole instead of a mouth.

I couldn't muster enough motivation to fight a the creature latched its inhuman mouth over my own and breathed in more strongly than before. There was no point fighting. All I could remember were all the awful things I'd seen, experienced, and done. I couldn't remember a time things had gone well.

Then, something silvery and luminous flickered out of the corner f my eye and the creature withdrew from the compartment. A wizard with brown hair with a bit of grey, wearing patched robes was soon leaning over me.

"Who are you?" I asked my savior.

"Professor Remus Lupin," he said, pulling a large bar of chocolate out of a pocket. "Here, eat it. It'll help."

I did as requested, with the others accepting chocolate and eating as well. The chocolate did help. It turned out that my happy memories weren't permanently gone, just suppressed and robbed of power in that creature's presence. I found Sloth's hand and squeezed.

"What was that thing?" asked Sloth.

"A dementor. One of the dementors of Azkaban," explained Lupin. "Now, I may be needed elsewhere, if you'll excuse me."

When he'd gone, I asked, "Did we just get our lives saved by the new defense professor?" Then I broke into hysterical laughter.

"That was aweful," said Neville as Sloth and I sat up shakily from the floor. "Looks as though you two got the worst of it, though."

Ginny had broken out in a cold sweat and Luna was holding her legs to try and stop trembling. I didn't feel well enough to stand until I'd finished my chocolate. Rather than talk, the five of us somehow ended up in a group hug for most of the rest of the trip. That helped almost as much as the chocolate had.

The five of us got off the train together and boarded one of the thestral pulled carriages. We were collectively starting to relax when a familiar chill passed over the carriage and we looked up to see a pair of tall, black cloaked dementors perched over the school gate. The feeling passed quickly and we arrived at the school proper.

"Potter! Granger! Oren! Tucker!" came a call from Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor house and deputy headmistress. Harry, Hermione, Sloth, and I approached. Shooing the others, she added, "There's no need to look so worried. I just want a word in my office. Move along."

Neville, Ron, and Luna headed for the Great Hall while the four of us followed McGonagall up to her office. She took a seat and said, "Professor Lupin sent an owl ahead to say that you three had taken ill on the train." She indicated Harry, Sloth, and I.

As if on cue, Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse, entered. "You, I expected," she said to Harry. Then she turned to Sloth and I, saying, "I'm surprised I haven't had to treat you two before with everything you get up to." She started checking us over while Harry protested that he was fine.

"It was a dementor, Poppy," explained McGonagall.

"Setting dementors around a school," said Madam Pomfrey disapprovingly. "They won't be the last ones who collapse. Terrible things they are, and the effect they have on people who are already delicate."

"I'm not delicate!" protested Harry.

"Madam Pomfrey," I ventured, "What did the dementors do to us?"

"Terrible creatures," she repeated half to herself. "They suck the joy right out of a person. It gets even worse with longer exposure."

"What do they need?" asked McGonagall. "Bed rest? Should they, perhaps, spend the night in the hospital wing?"

"I'm fine!" declared Harry.

"I think I'm okay, too," I said.

Sloth nodded and said, "Now that it's gone, I'm fine."

"Well, they should have some chocolate at the very least," said Madam Pomfrey.

"I've already had some," said Harry. "Professor Lupin gave me some."

"He gave some to us too," reported Sloth.

"Did he now?" said Madam Pomfrey, nodding. "So, we've finally got a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor who knows his remedies."

"Are you sure you feel alright?" confirmed McGonagall. We affirmed we did. "Very well, Potter, Tucker, please wait outside while I have a quick word with Mr. Oren and Miss Granger about their course schedules, then we can go down to the feast together."

Sloth, Harry, and Madam Pomfrey stepped outside. Professor McGonagall bade Hermione and I to have a seat, and checked her watch.

"We aren't going to have to drop anything, are we?" asked Hermione with concern.

"No, Miss Granger, you'll both be able to attend all your electives, provided you agree to certain conditions."

"What conditions?" I asked.

"First and foremost, absolute secrecy regarding precisely how," replied McGonagall. "You see, I have personally written to the Ministry on your behalf, noting your exemplary academic record and your fine moral character. After several attempts, they agreed to loan each of you the use if a time turner to aid with your studies."

"Time turner?" I asked.

Professor McGonagall took two tiny hourglasses from her desk drawer. Each hourglass was attached to a fine gold chain.

"It would be simplest to show you, Mr. Oren. I'll need the both of you to stay in your seats and stay quiet."

At that point, a blur appeared in the office, which coalesced nearly instantly into the form of another Professor McGonagall, Hermione Granger, and Marcus Oren. A fine gold chain was draped around all three, and McGonagall was holding the tiny hourglass it was attached to. The second McGonagall gathered up the chain and handed the assembly to the other me. She gave a second time turner she had been carrying to Hermione. The three of them quickly stepped out the door.

"Professor, that was us, wasn't it?" asked Hermione. "Us from the future?"

"That is correct, Miss Granger," she replied, satisfied. "Time travel is not to be taken lightly. You are being given this opportunity as a favor and a privilege, and only because I have assured the Ministry that you will use it only for the purpose it is being lent to you for."

I stared at the tiny device, considering the possibilities. First and foremost, with such a tool, I wouldn't need to worry about the time differential between worlds when traveling through the Gate. Sloth and I could be guaranteed to arrive back in our home world within a week of our departure even after a full seven year education at Hogwarts.

"Each turn of a time turner will bring you back one hour in time. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that you must not be seen using it, and that you must never interact with your past self," continued McGonagall.

"Why?" I asked. "What would happen if we did?"

"Besides the loss of your access to the device for breaking the rules," said McGonagall, "terrible things have been known to happen to witches and wizards who meddle with time. More than one witch has mistaken the appearance of her future self for an enemy and ended up killing herself.

"As a result, use of time turners is circumscribed by hundreds of laws, procedures, and regulations that you will both be expected to abide by. The most critical of which are that you will not attempt to alter past events and that no one learns you have a time turner, not even your closest friends."

"Won't they notice when we're in two places at once?" asked Hermione.

"Strict secrecy, Miss Granger," said McGonagall sharply. "Avoid raising suspicions and don't confirm anything if asked. I'm not expecting you to lie, but if it comes down to it, just explain that you can't talk about it."

"A few technical questions?" I requested.

"Go ahead, Mr. Oren," said McGonagall.

"Do we need to be careful about where we're standing when we activate these things? I mean, what if another student was standing in the same spot an hour ago?"

Professor McGonagall smiled benignly. "You needn't worry too much, Mr. Oren. Where you arrive in the past can be somewhat random, but I've never heard of the spot being occupied. At worst, you might bump into someone."

"It's random?" I said, confused.

"The time you arrive is exact. The place isn't. No one is completely sure what impacts the where, but if you stick to the rules, you're likely to arrive close to where you need to be."

"Is there a limit on how often it can be used?" asked Hermione. "I mean, after so many uses would we need to take it in to be replaced or serviced?"

"Objects with the power to control time aren't prone to general decay or limited uses," explained McGongagall. "I would keep it safe, however, as they are still made of glass. From what I understand, they can be quite dangerous if broken."

"Is there a way to use it to go forward instead of back?" I asked. "In case we turn it too many times on accident?"

"I'm afraid in that case, you would have to come forward one minute per minute just like the rest of us," replied McGonagall dryly.

Our questions answered and warnings issued, both Hermione and I agreed to the terms. McGonagall bade us stand up and wrapped the thin gold chain of one of the time turners around the three of us and gave the tiny hourglass a turn. There was a peculiar sensation like rushing backward, and then I found myself in the office with my past self. Per instructions, I accepted the time turner from McGonagall, placed it inside my robes, and quickly left, meeting up with Sloth and Harry waiting outside the office.

We arrived in the Great Hall after the sorting, but in time for Headmaster Dumbledore's announcements. I had time to find a seat at the Ravenclaw table near Luna and smile greetings to the new first years.

"Welcome," said Dumbledore. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts. I have a few things to say to you all, and as one of them is very serious, I think it best to get it out of the way before you become befuddled by our excellent feast.

"As you will all be aware after their search of the Hogwarts Express, our school is presently playing host to some of the dementors of Azkaban, who are here on Ministry of Magic business. They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds, and while they are with us, I must make it plain that nobody is to leave the school without permission. Dementors are not fooled by tricks or disguises, or even invisibility cloaks. It is not in the nature of a dementor to understand pleading or excuses. I therefor warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. I look to the prefects, and our new head boy and girl to make sure that no student runs afoul of the dementors.

"On a happier note, I am pleased to welcome two new teachers to our ranks this year. First, Professor Lupin, who has kindly consented to fill the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"As to the second appointment, well, I am sorry to tell you that Professor Kettleborn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to spend more time with his remaining limbs. However, I am delighted to say that his place will be filled by none other than Rubius Hagrid, who has agreed to take on this teaching job in addition to his game keeping duties.

"Well, I think that's everything of importance. Let the feast begin!"

* * *

The next day, I got the chance to try out my new time turner, since Arithmancy, Divination, and Muggle Studies were all scheduled as my first class in the morning. Arithmancy looked as though it was going to be interesting. Among the applications of magical number theory was understanding the significance of wand measurements, and by extension, improving upon my earlier, crude attempts. Turning the hourglass pendant, I found myself near to where I'd been after breakfast and hurried off to Muggle Studies, where I could get a more systematic view of how this world's peoples and technology differed from the worlds I was familiar with. Finally, one last turn and I was on my way to the tower classroom where we would be studying Divination.

Students were gathered at the top of the stairs under a door affixed to the ceiling. I quickly found Sloth among them. Neville was apparently also taking this class.

"Greed, I lost track of you when we left breakfast," said Sloth.

"Sorry about that," I said. "I needed to check in with my other classes before coming here."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione arrived, and as soon as Harry asked how we were going to get up to the classroom, the door opened and a ladder lowered. Timing like that was a good sign, given the subject matter.

The classroom was extremely warm, with soft, cushy armchairs, dim, red tinted light filtering through drapes over the windows. A scent of incense filled the room. It all contributed to a feeling of wanting to doze off. The chairs and pillows were grouped around tables and shelves of equipment lined the walls.

We got ou first look at the Divination professor. She was a tall, thin woman with very poor eyesight judging from her thick glasses. She dressed in gauzy layers with a lot of loose fitting jewelry. She moved slowly, gliding through the classroom as if only half awake herself. When she spoke, it was quiet and airy.

"Welcome," she said. "How nice to see you in the physical world at last. Sit, my children."

I sat in a comfortable looking chair at a table with Sloth,next to the table Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville had claimed.

"Welcome to Divination. My name is Professor Trelawney. You may not have seen me before. I find that descending too often into the hustle and bustle of the main school clouds my inner eye.

"So, you have chosen to study divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field. Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs, and smells, and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future. It is a gift granted to few."

At first I felt relieved. If this was something witches and wizards weren't really expected to be able to do, making mistakes and failing here wouldn't reveal Sloth and I weren't wizards. Looking up at Sloth, however, I saw she was nervously twisting one of her braids between her hands. I recalled that she had taken the minimum number of elective courses, meaning that if she couldn't pass this class, she wouldn't have anything to fall back on. I tried to turn my relieved smile into an encouraging one.

"You, boy," said Professor Trelawney to Neville, "is your grandmother well?"

"I think so," replied Neville.

"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you," she said. Then, continuing on, "We will be covering hte basic methods of divination this year. The first term will be devoted to reading tea leaves. Next term, we shall progress to palmistry. By the way my dear," she said suddenly to Sloth, "it isn't a cat and you shouldn't trust it."

Sloth looked suddenly at Hermione, who's expression was mildly exasperated.

"In the second term," continued Professor Trelawney, "we shall progress to the crystal ball, if we have finished with fire omens, that is. Unfortunately, class will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of flu. I myself will lose my voice. And around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever."

From there, Professor Trelawney poured us each a cup of tea,and instructed us on how to interpret the patterns in the dregs of one another's tea cups, and made various predictions as we went along. Sloth and I drank our tea, swirled the dregs as instructed, then swapped cups, comparing the patterns we saw with those in our divination textbooks.

"Trials and suffering... conflict... friendship?" said Sloth, examining my cup. "If I'm getting this right, you're in for a rough year and will be needing your friends."

"As for you," I said, going over her cup, "Growth... good fortune and happiness. Looks like you're doing a lot better than I am." We smiled at one another.

Suddenly, Professor Trelawney screamed. She'd been helping interpret Harry's cup. She collapsed into a chair, overwhelmed by what she had seen.

"My dear boy, my poor dear boy. No, it is kinder not to say. No. Don't ask me," said Professor Trelawney.

"What is it, Professor?" asked the Gryffindor Dean.

"Dean!" I snapped. "What did she just say?"

"My dear," said Trelawney to Harry, "you have the grim."

"The what?" asked Harry when half the class gasped.

"The grim, my dear, the grim," said Trelawney urgently. "The giant spectral dog that haunts churchyards! My dear boy, it is an omen. The worst omen. Of death!"

As we considered this information, Hermione looked over the professor's shoulder and reported, "I don't think that it looks like a grim."

"You'll forgive me for saying so, my dear," said Trelawney, "but I perceive very little aura around you. Very little receptivity to the resonances of the future."

The lesson concluded shortly thereafter and I had to say goodbye to the others and get to charms with the other Ravenclaws. Harry's death omen would soon be the farthest thing from my mind.

Professor Flitwick had provided each of us with a candle for a start of term review of flame freezing charms. I said the incantation, pointed my wand, and nothing happened. No blue light emanated from the intricate transmutation circle engraved along the wand's length. I quickly looked over the wand for damage, expecting, perhaps, a small crack having broken the array. Finding none, I tried the red stone at the wand's tip, but I couldn't make it transmute the air either.

Growing frustrated, I clapped my hands and gripped the wand, intending to simplify the multipurpose array, but again, there was no alchemic light, and the lines of the array refused to work. My alchemy wasn't working at all.

I thought back to the last time I'd successfully used alchemy. I was on the train. The lights had gone out, and I used the light from a simple transmutation to see by. This was just before the dementor! The creature had leaned over me, drawing out my happy memories. It had taken more than that.

"That thing ate my soul!" I yelled out suddenly, startling my classmates. I was trembling with rage. I wanted to find the monster that did this to me, rip off its limbs, and beat it to death with them. One hand was on my head, tense fingers digging into the skin, while the other clutched my chest. I hadn't even noticed when it happened.

"Marcus," said Professor Flitwick gently. I looked up at the elderly wizard miserable. I was on the verge of tears. "I think you should go to the hospital wing."

"R-right," I said, twitching slightly as I unclenched the muscles in my limbs so I could stand up. I walked unsteadily into the hall, with a vague idea of finding Madam Pomfrey. But what could she do about this? I'd looked into what wizards knew about the soul, and as far as I'd determined, my only real answer would be to use one of my coins to attach a new soul to my body like I'd done for Sloth. In an empty hall, far from either teachers or other students, the frustration got to be too much, and I punched a wall, pulverizing a large chunk of heavy stone into dust.

Looking through the new doorway sized opening into the empty classroom beyond, I instantly regretted the destructive outburst. Getting to my knees, I took a bit of chalk from my pocket and sketched a transmutation circle. It felt clumsy and crude doing it this way, but I had a responsibility to fix what I'd broken. With the circle completed, I touched a spare red stone to the center, causing the array to glow red. Pulverized stone melted back into the wall and floor, and the opening sealed as though the damage had never happened.

Then I got to my feet and found the hospital wing. Fixing the wall had been a good reminder that I wasn't helpless. Even without a soul, Sloth had managed her first two years of classes. I'd just need to adopt her style until I got a chance ot retrieve a new soul.

"Professor Flitwick sent me," I said with a downcast gaze when Madam Pomfrey opened the door. "I think I had a delayed reaction to the dementor from yesterday."

"Come in and let me have a look," said Madam Pomfrey. "Honestly, putting creatures like that around a school..." Sh checked my temperature and vitals. Everything was fine, as I knew it would be. They didn't have a test for a missing soul.

"I've heard dementors can steal your soul," I lied. "Is it true?"

"They can," said Madam Pomfrey, handing me a large piece of chocolate. "It's a punishment the Ministry reserves for the worst criminals. Black's likely fate. But they aren't allowed without special orders from the Ministry."

So, not only was it a soul eating monster, but it broke the law when it ate my soul. Unless someone in the Ministry of Magic =authorized that. As I chewed on the chocolate that served as a remedy for exposure to them, an idea half formed in my mind. I'd need to start keeping chocolate on me alongside my bezoars as general first aid supplies.

* * *

The stew at lunch was warn and tasty. It was a nice affirmation that I was still alive and could still partake in life's pleasures. Hadn't I spent all that time telling Sloth she shouldn't think of herself as lesser just because she didn't have a soul? It was a handicap and would take soem adjustment, but I was still me. The dementor hadn't taken that away.

I didn't have any further classes requiring a wand that day. It was just Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid. Getting out into the fresh air would be good for me, and I could talk with Sloth after. Because it was an elective, the classes were mixed. Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were talking when I arrived.

"Did they let you out of the hospital wing so soon?" asked Malfoy as I arrived. "I heard you lost it in Charms. 'It ate my soul!'" Crabbe and Goyle chuckled at Draco's high pitched, whiny impression of me. "What happened? Did Flitwick's pet student doze off in class and have a nightmare about the big, bad dementors?"

"If the next words out of your mouth aren't an apology, Malfoy, they'll be the last ones you speak today," said Sloth, who'd arrived in the middle of Draco's taunts.

"Going to let your girlfriend fight your battles for you?" drawled Draco.

"Hm, not an apology," mused Sloth. She waved her wand and spoke an incantation. The transmutation circle on her wand glowed blue, and Draco fell silent, looking a lot less smug.

"Thanks," I said.

"Are you okay, Greed?" she asked, concerned.

"I'll explain after class," I promised.

Crabbe and Goyle were trying to perform a countercurse to restore Draco's paralyzed vocal cords to proper functioning.

"You know standard countercurses don't work on our alchemy based spell simulations," I whispered to Sloth. "It'll be suspicious if they can't fix him."

"It'll be even more suspicious if Crabbe and Goyle don't take a few dozen tries to get it right," Sloth whispered back.

I grinned. "Good point."

The Gryffindors arrived and Sloth silently waved her wand at Draco. Goyle looked very proud of himself while Draco whispered invectives in our general direction. With the class all here, Hagrid greeted us and led us around to an empty paddock.

"Everyone gather around the fence here. That's it," instructed Hagrid. "Make sure you can see. Now, first thing you'll want to do is open your books."

"How?" asked Draco, glancing at Sloth as though his restored voice proved he and his gang had bested her. She rolled her eyes in response.

"Eh?" asked Hagrid.

"How do we open our books?" Draco repeated.

Looking around at all of us with our tied down books, Hagrid asked, "Hasn't-hasn't anyone been able to open their books? You've got to stroke 'em. Look."

Hagrid borrowed a book and ran a finger down its spine. It instantly stopped struggling and opened. I tried the same with mine and got hte same effect.

"Oh, how silly we've all been. We should have stroked them. Why didn't we guess?" Malfoy berated Hagrid.

"I-I thought they were funny," said Hagrid.

"Oh tremendously funny," Draco continued. "Really witty, giving us books that try and rip our hands off."

"Shut up, Malfoy," said Harry.

"Right then," said Hagrid, trying to retake control of the class. "So, you've got your books and now you need the magical creatures. Yeah, so I'll go and get 'em. Hang on." Hagrid left.

"God, this place is going to the dogs," complained Draco. "That oaf teaching classes. My father'll have a fit when I tell him."

"Shut up, Malfoy," repeated Harry.

"Or I'll shut you up again," added Sloth.

Malfoy fell silent, and Hagrid led out a dozen creatures that looked like crosses between eagles and horses. He brought hem to the fence and tied their collars to it with lengths of chain.

"Hippogriffs," said Hagrid by way of identification. "Beautiful, aren't they?"

They were indeed. They had the same sleek, deadly elegance of a well crafted chimera. The sharp beaks and foretalons looked more than capable of doing some damage, and their broad backs were perfect for carrying riders. The wings were too small to carry a creature this size without a magical boost, but otherwise, their bodies were well made and balanced enough to have been crafted by a master alchemist.

"So," continued Hagrid, "if you want to come a bit nearer. Now, first thing you got to know about hippogriffs is they're proud. Easily offended, hippogriffs are. Don't never insult one, 'cause it might be the last thing you do.

"You always wait for the hippogriff to make the first move. It's polite, see? You walk towards him, and you bow, and you wait. If he bows back, you're allowed to touch him. If he doesn't bow, then get away from him sharpish, 'cause those talons hurt. Right, who wants to go first?"

I stepped forward. The rest of the students had their misgivings, but I had experience with dangerous creatures from back before I became immortal. Follow directions and read the creature's body language, and you're generally fine.

"Good man, Greed," said Hagrid, untying one of the hippogriffs. "Right, then. Let's see how you get on with Buckbeak. Easy now, Greed. You've got eye contact, now try not to blink. Hippogriffs don't trust you if you blink too much. That's it. That's it, Greed. Now bow."

I took a low, deliberate bow, keeping my eyes fixed on the creature so I'd know if it reciprocated. I held the pose for a longmoment without Buckbeak moving a muscle.

"Ah, right. Back away now, Greed. Easy does it."

No sooner had Hagrid said that than Buckbeak bent his forelegs and lowered his head.

"Well done, Greed," said Hagrid happily. "Right, you can touch him. Pat his beak. Go on."

I did as instructed, patting the large creature's sharp beak. The hippogriff's body language said he was happy and comfortable. So much so that Hagrid suggested I see if he'd let me ride him. I noted as I took flight on the hippogriff's back that while it was slower than the thestrals had been,I was more at ease on the more thickly muscled hippogriff.

Once I'd landed and dismounted, the rest of the class was encouraged to try approaching the creatures. Everything was going well until I heard Draco Malfoy, who was patting Buckbeak, violate the first rule Hagrid laid out.

"I bet you're not dangerous at all, are you? Are you, you great ugly brute."

Insulted, Buckbeak attacked just as Hagrid said he would. Sharp avian talons cut deep into the flesh of Draco's arm. He was losing blood fast. Hagrid wrestled the enraged hippogriff away from the stupid, injured Slytherin.

"Greed?" prompted Sloth, indicating Draco's wounds.

"I can't," I choked, the feeling of helplessness returning full force.

"I'm dying! I'm dying! Look at me! It's killed me!" If Draco kept losing blood at this rate, he might turn out to be right.

"You're not dying!" said Hagrid, hoping more than believing it was true. "Someone help me. Got to get him out of here."

Hermione got the gate and ran ahead of Hagrid, who scooped up Draco and sprinted for the castle. He'd managed to secure the hippogriffs before attending to Draco, so the rest of us were left to wander off from the now obviously canceled class.

Pansy Parkinson, one of the Slytherins, was in tears. "They should fire him straight away!"

"That was Malfoy's fault!" countered Dean Thomas, a Gryffindor.

When Crabbe and Goyle took a step towards Dean, I added, "Draco ignored the first rule Hagrid told him. These are dangerous, wild animals, not pets. This experience ought to teach him to pay more attention in class."

Pansy broke off from the rest of our group and headed for the hospital wing, saying, "I'm going to see if he's okay!"

Sloth and I headed for the Quidditch field where she took my hand and lowered us both through the earth into our hidden underground lab.

"What's wrong, Greed?" asked Sloth seriously when we were alone. "Draco's an ass, but that wouldn't stop you saving his life."

I took out my wand and held it for a moment, before explaining, "I can't do alchemy. I haven't been able to since the dementor attack."

"Oh my... Greed, your soul..."

"I asked Madam Pomfrey. Dementors can eat souls. They apparently aren't supposed to, but that one did. I guess it's a good thing it went after me instead of Luna or Ginny or Neville. None of them could have survived without a soul."

"Use mine. We can detach it from me and attach it to you."

"No."

"I'm used to not having one. I can go back easier than you can adjust."

"No," I repeated. "That's your soul now, and I'm not going to take something away from you for my own benefit."

"But Greed-"

"Besides, I won't have long to wait. Once Sirius Black inevitably makes his move on Harry, I'll have a replacement. So don't worry. The tricky part will be adapting my alchemy style while we wait so I can keep pretending be a wizard, but you managed it for two years."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I sort of lost it when I realized it happened, but I'm going to be okay."

"You do realize I did as well as I did by changing the array on my wand with my powers. How are you going to manage?"

I took a red stone and some wood and constructed a new kind of wand while Sloth watched. It bore the same transmutation circle as Sloth used to emulate hte hover charm, but a section of hte wood was put on a sliding switch, allowing the array to be broken or reattached as needed.

"Nice," said Sloth, "but you're going to need one of those for every spell you know."

"We've got the stones for it," I said.

"And when you need a new spell unexpectedly? You're a terrific alchemist, and I believe you can come up with the array you'd need to use on the fly, but how're you going to carve it into a fresh fake wand in the middle of class?"

"I'll go back in time and warn myself what wand I'll need so I'll be prepared already each day," I said with a grin. I had been looking forward to telling her before the whole soul loss thing distract me.

"Go back in time?"

I pulled out the time turner McGonagall had given me. "It's called a time turner. It's how I'm going to take classes that are happening at the same time. I'm not supposed to tell anyone the Ministry's letting me use one."

"You realize with that, we could stop worrying if we'll get back to Amestris before Winry and the others mount a rescue mission."

"I had thought of that, yes. In fact, I've come up with a lot of uses to put it to, starting with not needing to time our private getaways for when Gryffindor Quidditch team isn't practicing, and not needing to worry about being missed if we're down here too long."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Greed's never really been forced to rely on his innate homunculus powers. When he was fighting Nazis, whenever his powers were available to him, so was his alchemy, so he didn't rely on them. Now that his alchemy isn't there to fall back on, at least not the same way he's used to, he's going to have to learn what he can do without it.


	19. Chapter 27: Worst Fears

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 27) Worst Fears  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Draco wasn't dead. Hagrid had gotten him to Madam Pomfrey before he bled out. Losing my soul and my powers hadn't ended up costing anyone his life. Strangely, Draco was taking an inordinately long time to recover. Consulting both my textbook and the library, I verified that hippogriffs weren't dark creatures that inflicted wounds more difficult to heal than normal.

Harry was convinced Draco was feigning his injuries. Apparently, Lucius was using the attack to get the school board to look into Hagrid's hiring. Given that a little over two months ago, Lucius had been kicked off the school board, in an incident that cleared Hagrid's name of a murder that he'd been accused of fifty years earlier, I was surprised no one on the board was suspicious of Lucius' motives. Then again, if the feared Lord Voldemort took a full school year figuring out how to get past obstacles as simple as Devil's Snare, perhaps it wasn't so surprising that members of the school board might not know the nature of wounds inflicted by a hippogriff and not think to look it up.

My plan to construct individual wands for each spell I would need to cast was getting me through my classes, but not being able to adjust or improvise was costing me in Charms and Transfiguration. My first Defense Against the Dark Arts class was scheduled at the same time as Ancient Runes. I wisely decided to attend the wand requiring Defense class first. When I entered the room, I found one of my single function wands on my desk. Looking it over, it proved to be my dancing charm.

Professor Lupin entered, wheeling in a cabinet, then he called the class to attention. "Good morning. Please put your books and papers away. Today's will be a practical lesson, needing only your wands."

The cabinet suddenly rattled loudly. "Nothing to worry about," said Professor Lupin, calmly. "There's a boggart inside. Boggarts like dark, enclosed spaces. Wardrobes, the gap beneath beds, the cupboards under sinks. We had one in a wardrobe in the teacher's lounge, but another Defense class took care of that one, so I had to pop down to the village and acquire this one for you."

Turning toward the class, Professor Lupin asked, "Can anyone tell me what is a boggart?"

"It's a creature that can turn into whatever you fear most," answered one of my classmates.

"Very good," confirmed Lupin. "So, the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us fears. This means that we have a huge advantage over the boggart before we begin. Have you spotted it?"

"We can know what form it will take before it does," I ventured.

"Good thinking, Marcus," said Lupin, "but we have another advantage. Numbers. It's always best to have company when you're dealing with a boggart. He becomes confused. Which should be become, a headless corpse, or a flesh eating slug? I once saw a boggart make that very mistake. Tried to frighten two people at once and turned himself into half a slug."

That got a laugh from the class, which in turn caused the boggart to rattle its cabinet.

"As you may have noticed," continued Professor Lupin, "what really finishes a boggart is laughter. The charm that repels a boggart is simple, but requires force of mind. You need to force it to assume a shape you find amusing."

Lupin had us practice the incantation "rediculus" several times before proceeding. "Very good, but that was the easy part, I'm afraid. You see, the word alone is not enough. Michael, what would you say is the thing that frightens you most in the world?"

He stared for a long moment before hesitantly saying, "Just now, Sirius Black."

A flash of anger, rather than fear, passed over Lupin's features so quickly you might miss it if you blinked. With even more casualness than before, he said, "An escaped dark wizard is probably the most sensible thing in the world to be afraid of. Now, the next step would be to make him funny. A change of clothes, dying him purple, whatever you think might make his appearance comical instead of threatening. Can you imagine it?"

"Yes," reported Michael.

"Right then. Picture those changes clearly in your mind's eye. When the boggart busts out of this cabinet and sees you, Michael, it will assume the form of Sirius Black. You will raise your wand thus and say 'rediculus' concentrating hard on those changes, and if all goes well, Boggart Black will be forced into the appearance you visualize. If Michael is successful, the boggart is likely to shift his attention to each of us in turn."

To that end, we were instructed to consider our worst fears and how to make them funny. I had two problems. I wasn't sure what my worst fear was, and even if I knew, I couldn't whip up a comical transmutation on the fly without my soul. Also, wizards apparently had a spell who's effect could be summed up as "make it funny."

Whatever was coming, future me had left me my dancing charm wand, so I took it in hand and hoped it would help with whatever I was afraid of. Michael started us off, and Sirius Black climbed out of the cupboard, every bit as ragged, emaciated, and deranged as his mug shot in the Daily Prophet.

After a moment's hesitation, Michael called out, "rediculus," and Black was suddenly dressed in full clown makeup with an orange afro wig and enormous red shoes. He tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground face first.

"Marcus, you're next!" called out Professor Lupin. I changed places with Michel, and with the sound of a loud crack, it was no longer Sirius Black on the ground. It was the partially decomposed corpse of a dark skinned young man. One of his legs was an advanced automail prosthetic, and he had a hole torn in the center of his chest.

It was my original human corpse, just as it had appeared the last time I laid eyes on it years ago. I'd destroyed it then because the human remains on which a homunculus was based represented its greatest weakness. In the presence of those remains, the superhuman strength, speed, and stamina we gain from consuming red stones vanishes. Touching those remains paralyzes us. And most importantly, if we were to be killed in the presence of those remains, we would stay dead.

I already felt the weakness in my limbs. Somehow, the boggart wasn't just emulating the appearance of my remains, but i twas able to duplicate at least some of the effects as well. I was officially afraid of boggarts now.

Professor Lupin seemed about to step in when I raised my wand, pressed the switch in the handle, and called out, "rediculus!" Red alchemic light poured from my wand, and a faint red aura enveloped the corpse. It stood up and began a dance number.

My strength returned when the next student stepped forward and my remains morphed into a slavering werewolf, only to have its fur styled and permed like a french poodle. More and more forms the boggart took were targeted by the spell, and the class' laughter built to a peak. The boggart suddenly exploded into a cloud of quickly dispersing smoke.

As we were dismissed, I fell to the back of the corwd and activated my time turner. Appearing in the empty classroom before Defense, I put a dancing charm wand from my bag on one of the desks and hurried off to Ancient Runes.

The runes being studied were the same ones used in advanced alchemy arrays. That they carried hte same meaning as runes used in Amestris, suggested an ancient alchemy using civilization once existed in this world. With at least one Philosopher's Stone in this world, it wasn't overly surprising. And even in my world, there had been cultures that abandoned the use of alchemy after discovering the secret to creating the Philosopher's Stone. Flamel must have studied enough of their writings to discover the Stone's array and he either never told anyone the details, or he didn't understand the principles well enough to do anything with a circle besides copy the Philosopher's Stone array exactly. With a Stone in hand, he wouldn't have felt any need for further alchemic study.

* * *

That evening, Sloth and I met up with Luna, Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny. It turned out we'd all faced our boggarts except Harry and Hermione. Unsurprisingly, the boggart hadn't survived long enough against the house renowned for courage for everyone to have a turn. Sloth was particularly shaken up about her encounter.

"I think Professor Lupin was confused when Riddle's diary appeared," said Ginny. "I gave it the cutest, girliest cover ever."

"I had one of those acromantulas from last year rolling around on the floor like an ugly ball after I took off its legs," boasted Ron.

"Professor Lupin had be put Professor Snape in my grandmother's clothes," said Neville, laughing at the memory.

"I got my remains," I said. "Apparently boggarts can have the same effect as the real thing. Lucky I had my dancing wand."

"You made your remains dance?" asked Hermione incredulously.

"It was macabre, but definitely funny," I explained.

"I should have tried that," said Luna. "I couldn't think of anything funny about my dad lying there dead just like my mom."

"I couldn't see anything funny about mine either," said Sloth. "Professor Lupin had to draw its attention."

"What was it?" asked Ron.

Sloth shuddered and said, "It turned into Sloth. Into what I was like before Greed helped me."

"What were you like?" asked Harry.

Putting an arm around Sloth for comfort, I said, "Her father used the equivalent of memory charms on her so he could use her as a weapon."

Patting my arm and getting out of the embrace, Sloth said, "And I... she was very dangerous."

"With the first week almost over," I said, changing the subject, "we need to talk about our extra curriculars."

"I'm still in Quidditch this year," reported Harry, unsure where I was going with this.

"We have a lot to squeeze into our schedules this year," I reported. "For starters, Sloth and I'll be teaching you occlumency. Dumbledore should have offered it at least to Harry by now. Ron's approaching the point where his alchemy knowledge can be dangerous, and we promised to teach Ginny to close her mind after what happened last year."

"Meanwhile, you three ought to learn it anyway while we're giving lessons," said Sloth to Luna, Neville, and Hermione. "It's generally a really useful skill."

"I asked Headless Nick to give us all sword fighting lessons, and he said yes," I continued. "We just need to work out a schedule."

"Sword fighting?" asked Ron. "What's the point of learning that?"

Ginny replied before I could. "Harry claimed the Sword of Gryffindor last year. It's only right he learn how to use it."

"Agreed," I said. "And there's no point in the rest of us not learning. Harry'll need sparring partners."

"Meanwhile, we're continuing the parseltongue lessons," said Sloth. "We'll all do what we can to help Ginny catch up."

"Are we going to have time to sleep?" asked Ron.

"I don't know what you're complaining about," I said. "You've got the minimum number of classes allowed. You should have plenty of time. Which reminds me, this year you start on bio alchemy. Same time as Harry's Quidditch practices like usual."

"I'm sitting in on that," said Sloth. "I need the extra practice, and I know I've got gaps. I didn't know how to heal Draco."

"Why didn't you heal him, Greed?" asked Harry. "Draco's been feigning injuries to get Hagrid in trouble. He wouldn't have been able to do that if everyone saw him patched right up just then."

"I couldn't," I said. "On the train to Hogwarts, one of the dementors ate my soul. Without it, my normal alchemy doesn't work."

"There you are!" came Professor Lupin's voice as he strolled toward our group. "Marcus, Nina, you both disappeared right after class. I'm glad I found you. I need you both to come down to my office for a few minutes."

Bidding the others goodbye, Sloth and I followed Lupin to the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor's office. Once there, he invited us to take a seat. In a casual tone, Professor Lupin asked a question that made my blood run cold.

"What exactly are the two of you?"

* * *

"What do you mean?" I asked, keeping my voice calm. I didn't feel the probing sensation of legelimency.

"I started to suspect something on the train," explained Lupin. "You were both too composed after the dementor attack. Neither one of you had a hair out of place. Then, in class, I got a look at your wands. That wasn't the rediculus charm, Marcus. That wasn't human magic at all."

"What are you going to do now?" asked Sloth.

"That depends on if you answer my question," said Lupin. "If you do answer, obviously what comes next will depend on what the answer is. If you don't answer, I'll have to try and find out for myself. Now, that would involve keeping a closer eye on you for more clues as well as asking around with the other teachers about you, potentially raising their suspicions."

I didn't see a way out of this. Neither did Sloth, apparently, because she asked, "Can you keep a secret, Professor Lupin?"

"If I wasn't willing or able, we wouldn't be having this conversation in private before I've consulted with the other teachers," answered Lupin.

"Professor Dumbledore already knows," said Sloth. She took my hand and adopted her homunculus form. I did the same with her. Our skin became pale and our hair turned black. Our eyes turned purple and slitted, and our teeth sharpened to points.

"We're homunculi," I said.

"Homunculi?" asked Lupin, confused. "I know I've heard thee term somewhere before. It wasn't in my defense or dark creatures compendium. I reviewed all my books on that before taking this position."

"It's a term from alchemy," I supplied. "A homunculus is an artificial human created using alchemy. The alchemist Parcelus Van Hohenheim was said to have successfully created one, but he didn't understand its needs or nature so it died soon after being born."

"I suppose I'll have to read up," said Lupin, cheerfully. "As for you two, I presume you're not Parcelus' creations, given how long ago he lived."

"Homunculi don't age like humans do," I said, "but no, we have different origins. Alchemy in Amestris, where we come from, is much more advanced than it is here."

"You're the ones who taught Ron Weasley alchemy," said Lupin, putting the pieces together. We nodded. "And that light. You were somehow doing alchemy in class with the boggart."

"We aren't wizards," I said. "We don't have any magic in us. We've been duplicating spells using alchemy the last couple of years."

"And those red crystals at the tip of your wands," said Lupin, "are those Philosopher's Stones?"

"No," said Sloth firmly. "They're alchemy amplifiers that let us get around some of the limitations inherent in alchemy, but they're made using a different technique and they aren't nearly as powerful."

"Alright, so, let me see if I've got all this. You both aren't human, but rather a rare kind of magical creature that can disguise yourselves as human. You can't do magic, but if you understand a spell well enough, you can duplicate its effects using alchemy. Is that about right?"

"Yeah," I said.

"I see. Well, this will present a problem," said Lupin. "I have a spate of defensive charms to teach students this year, and if you can't learn any of them, you'll fall behind very quickly indeed. I suppose this means I'll have to devote some time to provide you remedial tutoring to give you what information you need to duplicate these charms."

"You're not going to have us thrown out?" asked Sloth.

"This may surprise you to learn, but Professor Dumbledore has made something of a habit of opening Hogwarts up to... nontraditional students just like you. He's helped a lot of people get an education that might not otherwise have been possible. I, for one, have no intention of getting in the way of that." Professor Lupin smiled proudly as he described Dumbledore's efforts. "Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me."

* * *

Professor Lupin's remedial lessons proved quite useful indeed. Apparently, the anti-boggart charm operated by projecting a mental image and causing the boggart to think that was what you were afraid of. It made the boggart's own shape shifting powers work against it. Occlumency could produce the same effect.

As parseltongue lessons had already been started last year, it was a simple matter to just restart them. We did make two changes, the first being adding Ginny Weasly to the class. The second change was the location. Double checking to make sure we were alone, the eight of us filed into Moaning Myrtle's out of order bathroom.

"You came back?" asked Myrtle, genuine shock in her voice.

"We came to use the Chamber," explained Harry.

"I brought some things for the basilisk," added Luna, indicating a large basket.

"How come you never told anyone we were down there?" asked Ron, hotly.

"I tried," said Myrtle miserably. "The halls were all empty and then I ran into Peeves. He pointed me to where he said the headmaster was. When I got there, no one was there. I went back-"

"So, he led you on a wild goose chase while we were in the chamber fighting Riddle," I summarized. "We appreciate you trying anyway."

"Yeah, thanks for trying," said Ron after being elbowed in the ribs by Sloth and Hermione.

"We could use your help with something else," said Harry. "You won't have to leave your toilet. Just if anyone comes, can you let us know?"

"For you, Harry, anything," purred Myrtle.

Neville opened the tunnel and we slid down to the corridor and briskly walked to the Chamber of Secrets. Ginny was uncomfortable, but didn't say anything. Harry opened the door and we entered Salazar Slytherin's secret chamber. Luna called the basilisk.

"I've got some presents for you," said Luna as the gigantic serpent approached and bowed its head to keep from killing us with its gaze. Luna strapped a set of reflecting goggles onto its head. "With these, you won't have to worry about killing anyone on accident. It'll still petrify them, though."

"Thanks," replied the basilisk.

"I also brought you some earmuffs," said Luna, producing a fuzzy pink pair. "You can wear them when you go out to protect against roosters."

"Are you making it easier for Slytherin's basilisk to attack people and harder for people to kill it?" asked Ron incredulously.

"She is on our side," reminded Luna. "Put here to protect the castle."

"She?" asked Ron.

"Look at the coloration around the head," noted Luna, who was feeding the king of serpents a large roast from her basket.

"The important thing," said Hermione, "is that with her here, we'll have two native speakers to practice with. The rest of us can practice with the basilisk while Harry runs Ginny through her introductory vocabulary."

After a half hour of parseltongue practice, I called everybody back together and switched back to english for Ginny's benefit.

"I'd like to get everyone started on their occlumency training now too," I said. "Harry's overdue to start learning this, and Ron, you're getting to a point in your alchemy lessons where Voldemort and his people will start wanting what's in your head, if they don't already. Ordinarily, the person teaching you this would try to read your mind and you'd gradually get better at keeping them out. Since none of us can do legilimency, we're going to have to do it a bit differently. Once a week, we'll meet. Sloth and I will guide you through some meditations and techniques for clearing your mind and controlling your surface thoughts. You practice on these each night before bed. Then, when you have potions for the week, get Snape to try and read your mind and try out what you've learned."

"What?" asked Neville.

"Are you mental?" demanded Ron. "You want us to spend the whole year provoking Snape every chance we get? We'll be in detention till past our NEWTs."

"Don't do anything bad enough to get a detention over," said Sloth. "Just enough to make him want to know what's going on."

"I can't," said Neville, closing up and trembling. Professor Snape had been his boggart. Neville had faced Slytherin's basilisk in this chamber and had traded curses with Lord Voldemort, but Snape terrified him beyond reason.

"What's wrong, Neville?" I asked.

"What's wrong?!" Neville exploded. "Black wasn't the only wizard who sided with You-Know-Who last time! A couple of them went after my mum and dad. They didn't die like Harry's parents. They weren't that lucky. They were tortured so long and so bad that they're still in St. Mungos not sure who they are!"

"What does-?" I started, but Neville interrupted.

"Snape was one of them! Most of his followers are in Azkaban. The ones that attacked my parents are. But a lot of them got off. I've seen the list. My gran made sure I knew. Snape's one of them, and you want me to give him an excuse to go inside my head?"

"Neville, I'm sorry about what happened ot your parents," said Harry.

Pausing, Hermione awkwardly asked, "How do you know Snape's guilty?" When that drew angry looks from all of her fellow Gryffindors, she pressed on. "You all did Professor Binns' essay on muggle witch hunts. Just because someone was accused of something doesn't make it true. I mean, he spent all of our first year trying to save Harry's life. Why would he do that if he was loyal to Voldemort?"

"Why don't you just use your kneazle to check Professor Snape?" asked Luna.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

"My what?" asked Hermione.

"The kneazle you brought to school this year," repeated Luna. "Crookshanks."

"What is a kneazle?" I asked.

"You didn't know?" asked Luna. "Kneazles are a kind of magical cat that can tell if someone's trustworthy or not. I've got a book with them in it if you want to read it."

Luna dug through her book bag and pulled out not the magazine her father published, the Quibbler, filled with improbable conspiracies and unconfirmed creatures like we were expecting, but one of the school's library books. She flipped it open tot he chapter describing kneazles. Crookshanks fit the description perfectly.

"'It isn't a cat and you shouldn't trust it,'" said Sloth. "Professor Trelawney said that to me in our first class."

"Rubbish," said Hermione. "The whole point of kneazles is you're supposed to trust them."

"He keeps going after Scabbers," complained Ron.

"Is Scabbers evil?" asked Luna conversationally.

"Of course not," snapped Ron. "Why he once bit Goyle for is!"

"We could use my sneakoscope," said Harry.

"That thing's busted," said Ron. "You saw how it was going off on the train."

"Was Scabbers there?" asked Luna.

"My rat isn't evil!" yelled Ron.

"We can try both," I said, placatingly. "Even if Crookshanks and the sneakoscope aren't perfect detectors, if we try both on Snape, it'll help, don't you think? After all, if the problem is false positives, then being too sensitive, they should still be good for telling if Snape isn't evil."

"Maybe Scabbers has an evil flea," mused Luna dreamily. Ron rolled his eyes.

Everyone consented to get the initial occlumency introduction done, and to practice. We'd decide whether to use Snape or not pending the results from the sneakoscope and Crookshanks.

* * *

Harry and Hermione reported no signal of untrustworthiness from Snape on the next day at our parseltongue lessons. Ron was still skeptical, but Neville had worked up the courage to try, mostly on the grounds that Snape could currently read his mind any time he liked and he didn't have any defense.

After our parseltongue lesson for the day was concluded, I had everyone wait. Shortly, Headless Nick floated in the opened door, holding his head like a lantern and looking very nervous.

"Did Myrtle give you any trouble, Sir Nicholas?" I asked.

"No, no. She said I was expected," he replied. Holding his head at arm's length, he took in the room. "So, this is the Chamber of Secrets. Why did you want to meet down here instead of one of the unused rooms in the castle?"

"We don't know how the teachers would react to us sword fighting in an empty classroom," noted Sloth.

"I'm sure they'd understand," said Headless Nick. "It isn't as though the school hasn't had fencing clubs before."

"Also, because we'll be practicing with these," I said, taking a thin cylinder covered with alchemic symbols out of my bag. Pressing a switch, a beam of red light extended from one end. I switched it off and tossed it to Neville. I handed them out as I spoke. "I designed them over the summer. There's a switch to turn it on and off, and two dials near the bottom of the handle. One adjusts the blade length and the balance. The other adjusts the damage. There are three settings. The first won't cut anything but air and will pass through everything else harmlessly. The second setting makes it work like a club, bashing into people. The third setting will cut through anything made of normal matter like a hot knife through butter."

"That sounds dangerous," said Sir Nicholas.

"I added the first two settings recently. It originally only had the third," I said. "Anyway, no matter what the setting, the blades will clash with each other."

"Um, there's something wrong with mine," said Ron. "There aren't any dials or switches."

"That's because you're an alchemist," I explained. "Everyone else's are powered by red stones in the hilt. You can just activate the array on yours and set it however you want."

Ron grasped the hilt and a golden blade extended. Everyone else switched on theirs, illuminating the room with alchemic light. Sloth's sword glowed blue while all the rest glowed red.

"Why does yours have a switch?" asked Ron. "You're a better alchemist than I am."

"Because a dementor ate my soul," I said, "and until I get a new one, I can't use alchemy."

"That isn't how souls work," said Sir Nicholas. "If you don't have your soul, there's no you anymore. Just an empty shell."

"It is how homunculi work," I said. "Now, is everyone ready to get started?"

Sir Nicholas set his head down where he could get a good view, drew a ghostly saber, and began demonstrating grips, stances, footwork, and forms. We formed into rows and began practicing. It was slow going, so we agreed to meet six days a week to practice.

* * *

Both our normal classes and our extra curricular activities proceeded. My Arithmancy classes proved to be every bit as challenging and rewarding as I'd hoped. Muggle studies was slow to build, covering a lot of basics I already knew at this point. My previous training let me breeze through Ancient Runes. Care of Magical Creatures became very boring indeed thanks to Draco's stunt. Hagrid didn't dare introduce us to anything more exciting than flobberworms. Tea leaf readings continued in Divination, and I started noticing that the less I focused on precisely interpreting the shape in the cup, the more often my readings matched Professor Trelawney's.

In my core classes, Astronomy, History of Magic, and Herbology were the same as always, wandless classes that held little interest most of the time, but which I worked to do well in anyway to keep my grades up. Potions remained a highlight, even though Professor Snape's mood was worse than normal. Using my time turner to drop off the right wand to myself was a winning strategy for Charms and Transfiguration. Defence was enjoyably hectic with Professor Lupin bringing in one dark creature after another for us to fight.

Occlumency lessons were going better than I expected. The others reported being able to detect Snape's intrusions almost immediately. It was harder to tell if they'd succeeded or failed at keeping him out, but either way, they were all noticeably improving.

A few weeks was as long as I could restrain my curiosity about the miraculous device around my neck. I'd been warned not to change the past, but was it possible? So, I picked something relatively simple and innocuous for a test.

After finishing my Muggle Studies class, I would go back in time for my Arithmancy class, but before leaving the Muggle Studies classroom, I'd leave a note on my desk to myself that hadn't been there the last time, explaining the experiment (in code, just in case). I flipped the enchanted hourglass over and found myself in a part of the castle I didn't recognize. After getting some directions from a portrait of a knight, I ended up having to rush to my Arithmancy class to get there in time. This was the first time the time turner had behaved that way, and it wasn't much of a leap to guess it had something to do with my experiment.

I tried a few more times that week to leave myself a paradoxical note, only to be deposited in the past far enough from my past self that I couldn't manage it. In one particular instance, when I gave myself a lot of extra time, I ended up dumped in the middle of the lake and had to swim back.

This phenomenon only made me more curious. I tried out a new experiment. I decided that if I ended up on my past self's left, I'd move on, but if I was on his right, I'd deliver a paradoxical message. I was consistently deposited on the left. It was as though there was some guiding intelligence working out exactly where to drop me off in the past to preserve the flow of history.

Further experiments revealed that every time I used the time turner, I arrived at the closest possible point to my past self that preserved a self consistent timeline. If I was careful and committed to closing time loops, I could appear in the same room. If I was dedicated to causing a paradox, I'd arrive to far away to achieve it.

By carefully precommitting to attempting to a paradox if I arrived anywhere else, I was able to control my arrival point with considerable accuracy. Instead of needing to rush to class after using the time turner, I could ensure that I showed up right at the classroom. After finishing up my homework for the evening, I would sit at one of the desks in the Ravenclaw common room and compile my notes on the experiment. Obviously publishing the paper I was writing would be out, since I wasn't supposed to be using the time turner for anything but getting to my classes, but the process of getting it written up left me with a feeling of accomplishment anyway.

* * *

At the start of October, Harry's Quidditch practices started up again, which meant resuming Ron's alchemy lessons. Fortunately, transfiguration classes often involved insects, small mammals and the like, so I was able to procure the basic materials without raising any suspicions. Loki was at my side when Sloth, Ron, and I descended into the Chamber of Secrets carrying boxes, cages, and tanks of fish.

"You know, they're treating me like a genius," said Ron. "Like I figured this all out on my own. Doesn't it bother you that you aren't getting the credit?"

"I didn't figure this all out on my own," I said as I set up cages. "You aren't a fraud if that's what you're thinking. The knowledge you have is real."

"You just have more," he said, looking between Loki and the wand at Sloth's hip.

"If we wanted to be famous, we'd have done it," said Sloth. "And if you stick with it, you'll know everything we do about alchemy. You're already getting into territory I'm not great at."

"Now, first rule," I said firmly, "you don't attempt to use anything you learn hear on a human being. Eventually, we'll get you to that point, but humans are more difficult and more dangerous to use alchemy on than other animals. My first attempt at human alchemy failed. My second left me bleeding out on a cold floor after my heart got ripped out."

Ron instinctively put his hand on his chest and nodded.

"Good," I said. "This year, you'll be learning the basics of bio alchemy. This will form the foundations for later lessons. Loki is a product of the techniques I'm going to teach you. Living creatures created by mixing different animals together using alchemy are called chimeras. You'll both be making a lot of them this year, and since I can't do alchemy myself, any mistakes you make when creating these creatures, you'll have to fix yourself."

I'd successfully impressed caution on Ron, who was focusing intensely on the transmutation circle for his first chimera, mixing a goldfish with a black beetle. Sloth was visibly uncomfortable with the subject matter. Given that she had the memories of Nina Tucker, who'd been crudely fused with the family dog shortly before her death, it would be surprising if she wasn't uncomfortable, but she was determined to stick out the lessons. I looked over their shoulders, pointing out flaws and points of concern with their transmutation circles.

The live ingredients were placed in jars, the blue and gold light accompanied the creation of their first chimeras. As with all starting attempts, they were crude, and more than a little malformed. I walked them both through fixing the worst of the deformities, then we moved on.

"Today we worked with creatures with very simple nervous systems," I said as we got ready to go. "As the lessons continue, we'll be using more and more advanced animals, who's ability to feel pain is likewise greater. Without care and study, you can cause a lot of suffering with this technique. So remember to slow down and double check everything as we go forward."

* * *

Author's comments:  
It wasn't precisely intentional that so many people would be confronting their inner demons in this chapter. I suppose the boggart just put me in the mood for it. Between being caught outright by Professor Lupin, Neville dealing with the Death Eaters who went free in the form of Snape, and Sloth starting to make her own chimeras, I'm happy with the result, but I didn't even notice it was all so clustered until I sat down to retype this.


	20. Chapter 29: Reckless Plans

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 29) Reckless Plans  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.) 

* * *

Ron continued to complain about Crookshanks targeting Scabbers. Hermione insisted that it was just in the nature of cats to chase rats, and that Crookshanks couldn't be blamed. Ron would counter that Scabbers was ill, didn't need the stress of fleeing a cat constantly, and that he had been there first. Luna still seemed convinced the whole thing could be explained by Scabbers being evil.

Much as the rest of us tried to help, most of the burden of mediating between Ron and Hermione fell to Harry. They seemed to finally grasp the burden they were putting Harry under when Halloween came, and Harry was lamenting that without a signed permission form, and with a mass murderer trying to kill him, he must be the only third year not allowed to visit Hogsmeade village. Sloth and I had quietly handed in forged permission slips that had not met with any significant scrutiny.

Ron and Hermione promised to get Harry all kinds of treats from the sweet shop Honeydukes, and to tell him all about the trip. Luna and Ginny, who were second years and couldn't go anyway, offered to keep him company, but Harry said he had some work to catch up on and that he'd be fine.

Passing through the main gate of Hogwarts grounds, a chill passed through me, and memories of the worst times in my life rushed to the surface. Screams of the dying sounded distantly. I pulled a piece of chocolate from my robe pocket and popped it in my mouth. The memories still came, and it didn't silence the screams, but it did warm my core and lift some of the feeling that everything was hopeless. I stared up at the pair of cloaked dementors perched above the gate. Hot rage and seething hatrid filled up the part of my mind which the chocolate had banished the helplessness from.

When the dementors were out of sight, and I could no longer hear the screams, I distributed chocolate to the others. Sloth and I were still the worst effected.

Dervish and Bangs was a marvel of a shop, containing more magical equipment than I could guess the use of. I picked up some sneakoscopes there, for our house, our lab, and various gifts for Christmas. I also picked up some good wood of various types and some wood working tools. My arithmancy lessons were going well, and I wanted to give wand making another go. I also grabbed a set of divination equipment for practice.

Zonko's joke shop contained the most obviously magical materials in the whole town, with almost everything having both an obvious effect and a more subtle one. Besides fireworks, stink pellets,and various other loud or explosive devices, that is. Since every item in the shop qualified as contraband according to Filch, I resisted the temptation to empty the shelves into my bag with the undetectable extension charm.

The sweet shop, Honeydukes, had all our old favorites from the train cart and hundreds more besides. Ron and Hermione tried gathering large armloads of sweets for Harry, who was stuck back at the castle, but as I did have a virtually bottomless bag, I offered to carry it. As a result, Ron bought a box of everything int he store. He seemed to really enjoy having so much money he didn't have to even keep track of it.

When we visited the Three Broomsticks Inn, Ron bought us all a round of butterbeer, tipping generously. Butterbear had some of the warming, blushing properties of alcohol, but wouldn't intoxicate humans. That made it a perfect drink for the chilly autumn weather.

In all, the visit to Hogsmeade was almost as novel and wondrous as my first trip to Diagon Alley, with the added bonus of friends to share the experience with. I preemptively popped some chocolate in my mouth before passing under the gate on my way back to school. The experience of passing by the dementors was unpleasant, but passing.

We reported to Harry, Ginny, and Luna what we'd seen and done in Hogsmeade, and shared out the utterly unreasonable amount of sweets we'd brought back from Honeydukes. Harry, in return, related a peculiar incident at the castle. He'd been having tea with Lupin when Snape brought in a potion. Lupin had claimed it helped him with some unspecified illness and that it was a particularly difficult potion to brew, hence enlisting Snape's help. We didn't get much chance to discuss it further before it was time for the feast.

As usual, the food was excellent. The ghosts provided entertainment for the evening. Sir Nicholas arranged a reenactment of his botched beheading, having temporarily reaffixed his head to his shoulder with a ghostly strap of some sort. He followed it up with a fabricated story of him finishing his decapitation postmortem by accident. He claimed it happened when he tried to pull his hair out when everyone was ignoring him at his deathday party the previous year. He proudly announced he'd been asked to join the Headless Hunt, but that he was taking time considering his options, since it would interfere with his duties as Gryffindor house ghost. I think being able to reject their offer made him happier than actually joining the Headless Hunt would have.

* * *

I was just getting settled into a comfy chair with a new book from the library in the Ravenclaw common room when Professor Flitwick entered, roused all the students who'd already got off to bed, and sent us back down to the Great Hall. No explanations were forthcoming until the whole school was gathered in the Great Hall and Dumbledore issued an announcement.

"The teachers and I need to conduct a thorough search of the castle. I'm afraid that, for your own safety, you will have to spend the night here. I want the prefects to stand guard over the entrances to the hall, and I am leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge. Any disturbance should be reported to me immediately. Send word with one of the ghosts. Oh yes, you'll be needing..." With a wave of his wand, Dumbledore stood the tables up around the walls and conjured hundreds of purple sleeping bags. "Sleep well," he said before departing.

Once he was out, the Gryffindors explained that the Fat Lady, the portrait that guarded the entrance to their tower, had been slashed by Sirius Black in an attempt to gain entry.

"Everyone into their sleeping bags! Come on now, no more talking! Lights out in ten minutes!" called Percy.

"Come on," hissed Ron in parseltongue, leading those of us who knew it to a corner. We grabbed sleeping bags and followed. We got in and continued to converse in hisses. Fortunately, Ginny was far enough along that she could follow.

Hermione hissed an angry tirade at the suggestions other students were speculating about how Black got in. "Honestly, am I the only person who's ever bothered to read Hogwarts a History?"

"Obviously not," hissed Sloth, rolling her eyes. "They were all checked out last year. Someone was reading them."

"It's just the castle's protected by more than walls, you know," continued Hermione. "There are all sorts of enchantments on it to stop people entering by stealth. You can't just apparate in here. And I'd like to see a disguise that could fool those dementors. They'd have seen him fly in too. Filch knows all the secret passages. They'll have them covered..."

"The lights are going out now! I want everyone in their sleeping bags and no more talking!" yelled Percy. The candles all went out, leaving the Great Hall illuminated only by the stars overhead shining on the enchanted ceiling.

I closed my eyes, but didn't sleep. If Sirius Black was in the school to kill Harry, he'd likely come here next, and I was determined to give him a surprise. Hidden inside my sleeping bag, I covered my body with the Ultimate Shield and waited.

At around three, Dumbledore returned to check in with Percy. They came over to our corner to talk.

"Any sign of him, Professor?" whispered Percy.

"No. All well here?"

"Everything's under control, sir."

"Good. There's no point moving them all now. I've found a temporary guardian for the Gryffindor portrait hole. You'll be able to move them back in tomorrow."

"And the Fat Lady, sir?"

"Hiding in a map of Aryllshire on the second floor. Apparently, she refused to let Black in without the password, so he attacked. She's still very distressed, but once she's calmed down, I'll have Mr. Filch restore her."

Snape entered and made his way over to Dumbledore. "Headmaster, the whole of the third floor has been searched. He's not there. And Filch has done the dungeons. Nothing there either."

"What about the astronomy tower? Professor Trelawney's room? The owlery?"

"All searched."

"Very well, Severus. I didn't really expect Black to linger."

"Have you any theory as to how he got in, Professor?"

"Many, Severus. Each of them as unlikely as the next."

"You remember the conversation we had, Headmaster, just before- ah- the start of term?"

"I do, Severus," replied Dumbledore in a tone that warned Snape was about to cross a line.

Snape hesitated at that tone, but steeled his nerve and pressed on. "It seems almost impossible that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when you appointed-"

Dumbledore cut him off firmly with, "I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it. I must go down to the dementors. I said I would inform them when our search was complete."

"Didn't they want to help, sir?" asked Percy.

"Oh yes," said Dumbledore, "but I'm afraid no dementor will cross the threshold of the castle while I am headmaster."

Dumbledore strode out, with Snape leaving soon after. Once they'd gone, a few questioning hisses confirmed that the others had been awake to hear that too.

* * *

Harry was under strict observation and guard after Black's attempt, which severely disrupted our parseltongue, occlumency, and fencing lessons. The teachers were keeping too close an eye on him for him to be able to slip off to the Chamber of Secrets. It was just as well in terms of the occlumency. Everyone had a pretty solid handle on the basic blanking your mind in response to an intrusion technique. Projecting false thoughts was next, but there was really no way to do that without feedback from the legilimense.

Ginny was the only one who really needed more parseltongue training, and she was sharing a dorm with Harry. It was the fencing lessons that really suffered, which was especially a shame since Neville was really standing out in that. Sloth and I had experience using the weapon in combat, but without formal instruction, we had picked up a number of bad habits we had to unlearn before making any real progress.

I didn't see any choice but to go talk to Professor Snape. He clearly knew or suspected something about Black and Professor Lupin, and Snape had a good track record identifying threats to Harry's life. I knocked on the door to his office a few days after the incident.

"Mr. Oren? I've been expecting you," he said, steepling his fingers and leaning back in his chair. "Come in, and close the door behind you."

I did as instructed and then sat down. "You've been expecting me?"

"For a week or so now. I presume this is about Potter's occlumency lessons." Snape's lips curled into a superior smile at the look of surprise on my face. "You didn't think I could miss what you were doing did you? How could they learn anything if I wasn't making the effort to match my legilimency level to their occlumency ability?"

"Right," I said, how poor a plan this had really been becoming clear to me.

"In any case, your little clique has made it as far as they can go without my taking a more active hand in their instruction."

"Will you do it?" I asked.

"Now that you know I've been helping you, I don't see how I have any choice but to finish the job. Bring your students to the potions classroom on Thursdays an hour before dinner."

"Thank you, Professor," I said, getting up to go. Then, remembering why I'd come, I asked, "Professor, do you know anything about Professor Lupin we should know?"

"Nothing I am at liberty to speak of, Mr. Oren. You are dismissed."

* * *

"You did what?" demanded Ron.

"He agreed to help us," I replied, defensively.

"What we were doing was one thing, but being alone in a room with Snape!" said Neville, horrified.

"He already knew what we were doing," I said. "He's been helping the whole time, making your attempts to block him hard enough to challenge us and easy enough that you wouldn't be overwhelmed right away."

"I'm going," said Harry. "Like Greed said, we've already had him rooting around in our heads. If he was going to do anything to us, he'd have done it by now."

Harry had made up his mind and everyone followed his lead. Even Neville found his courage and came with us, determined not to abandon us when we faced Snape.

"As far as anyone is to know, the eight of you are here for remedial potions work. Goodness knows some of you could use just that," said Snape when we arrived. "Mr. Oren and Miss Tucker have already given you the basic explanation of how occlumency works. Now you will all move on to more advanced techniques. That includes you two as well," Snape added to Sloth and I. "The headmaster may have provided you with some instruction, but he has far too gentle a touch. When I am through with you, the dark lord himself won't be able to say if you are his friend or his enemy."

One by one, Snape called us forward. Rather than just look us in the eye, he drew his wand and called out the incantation, "legilimense!" The resulting psychic intrusion was more powerful, more subtle, and better controlled than the wordless, wandless version Dumbledore had used in our training. There was no pretense of respecting our privacy as he dug into our minds. It was our responsibility to fight him off.

Snape was abrasive and acidic in his criticisms of our technique. Any mistake he would use to cut through our defenses and detail a laundry list of flaws to shore up. The instruction we'd already had from Dumbledore let Sloth and I keep Snape away from knowledge of our true nature, our origins, and anything especially private. But his more potent and vigorous assault on our defenses definitely helped us improve. If he'd been teaching this our first year, Voldemort might not have gotten the foothold he did when trying to posses us.

He prodded at our psychological weak spots verbally as well as with legilimency, trying to teach the emotional control needed to resist being provoked into making mistakes. We all left the first lesson more exhausted and broken down than Dumbledore had ever left us, but Sloth and I were encouraged and calmed the worries the others expressed.

* * *

Ron and Sloth's alchemy training intensified as Harry's Quidditch training ramped up in preparation for their first match of the season. We'd covered rudimentary bird and mammal chimeras. It was almost time to get into advanced techniques like constructing new traits not present in the base animals, healing tissue damage, and optimizing for the specific desired function.

The day before Harry's match, Professor Lupin's illness flared up again, and Snape filled in for him. He spent some considerable portion of the first part of class insulting Lupin's teaching style, record keeping, and progress. The truth was we'd ended up so far behind because we'd had Quirrell and Lockheart the last two years. Lupin was working miracles getting us to our current point as quickly as he did. After finishing his calm, smooth, unfair tirade against Lupin, he assigned us to go over werewolves, assigning an essay on ways to identify and kill them.

I kept silent as the pieces clicked into place. All the signs fit, and I just bet it was close to a full moon. Professor Lupin was a werewolf. That's why he thought he couldn't be trusted. And that's why Professor Lupin was as understanding of my and Sloth's situation. Lupin had been talking about himself when he talked about Dumbledore taking a chance on people no one else would.

* * *

The sky was pitch black except for the far too often and far too close flashes of lightning when the school came out for the first Quidditch match of the season. Gryffindor versus Hufflepuff, so I was carefully neutral on the outcome. We could all root against Slytherin together, but we were obviously supporting our own houses. I was wearing a waterproof, hooded cloak and was staying well away from anyone with an umbrella, as was everyone else who had enough muggle studies to know how electricity worked.

The wind was roaring too loudly for me to hear the commentary, and the sheeting rain made it hard to tell the red Gryffindor uniforms from the yellow Hufflepuff ones. I was questioning whether it was worth being out in the cold and wet when I was suddenly gripped by a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature, and the howling wind gave way to the screams of the dying.

Dementors had come onto the field and were staring sightlessly up. They were attacking Harry. That thought pushed me to pop some chocolate in my mouth and act. There were a hundred of the soul sucking monsters on the field, and I was the only one they couldn't suck a soul out of. The Ultimate Shield spread over my body, I tossed aside my cloak, and launched myself out of the stands to land right in front of the nearest dementor.

I didn't look human when covered by the Ultimate Shield, but the sightless dementors weren't intimidated by my appearance. Rage and fury welled up inside me as the monsters continued to draw out my worst memories, and I was deafened to all except the final screams of the dead. I closed a fist and punch the nearest dementor. It launched into the sky like a rag doll faster than I could imagine possible.

A homunculus' physical strength is proportional to the energy density of red stones we've consumed. At the end of first year, I'd eaten a Philosopher's Stone which had been forged from the lives of over eighty thousand people. I had never unleashed that strength until now.

Relying on chocolate and fury to keep me moving, I knocked dozens of the creatures out of the field before anyone else had managed to properly react. I'd seen how fast Wrath could move when he fought Gluttony, and he'd eaten only a handful of far weaker stones. I was barely processing how fast I Was moving as I relied on anger to stave off depression and helplessness. These things had eaten my soul,and they would pay for it.

The dementors began to retreat, and the screams quieted. Enraged beyond reason, I pursued them as they fell back to the forbidden forest. I pounced on one of the dementors, tackling it to the ground. I brought a neigh indestructible fist down on its skull with the force of a destroyed city's worth of people hitting all at once. The crack of the impact sounded like thunder, and a crater indented into the earth from the impact.

The dementor was still moving. Its body had been left completely uninjured. I punched again, and the crater sank deeper, and the creature I hit still lived. Again and again I struck, nearby trees toppling over as the earth distorted under my onslaught, and still the dementor wouldn't die.

Hopelessness crept in again, stealing the strength from my limbs as my resolve faltered. The screams were back, and I was out of chocolate. I collapsed, and the dementor I'd tried to kill leaned over me. I had the grim satisfaction of knowing it wouldn't get a tasty soul out of the deal, but it was small comfort indeed as depression closed in on me.

Hope and motivation rushed back as a silvery apparition of a phoenix put itself between me and the dementor. It drove the demonic creature away, and I sat up in the center of the crater that was rapidly filling with muddy water.

"Don't those things die?" I asked the apparition, rhetorically.

"The term is amortal," said Albus Dumbledore as he strode into view. "Dementors were never born, and they cannot be destroyed through any known means."

"Professor Dumbledore?" I said, drawing the Ultimate Shield away from my head to reveal my face.

"What you did attacking the dementors like that was dangerous and foolish," he said firmly. "But in truth, it never should have been necessary. The dementors had strict orders about where they were and were not allowed, and I cannot fault you for acting in defense of yourself and your fellow students. I will ask you to refrain from pursuing them off the grounds in the future, however."

"No promises," I said, getting to my feet. "One of those things ate my soul on the train."

"The soul-" started Dumbledore, but I cut him off.

"I'm not human. Homunculi can live without our souls. I'm diminished by its loss, yes, but we don't just drop catatonic after losing them like humans do."

A flash of anger appeared in the old wizard's eye and he said, "I have told the Ministry that the dementors are not under control. Crossing over onto the grounds was bad enough, but attacking a student and performing the kiss! Fortunately you have survived, but that also makes this difficult to prove. Return to the school. I shall make my displeasure known to the dementors." Dumbledore departed, the silvery phoenix at his side. I did as instructed.

* * *

Harry had apparently toppled off his broomstick when the dementors attacked. His broomstick, one of the firebolts Ron had gifted the Gryffindor team, had been blown into the whomping willow and smashed to bits. Ron had already ordered a replacement and was reassuring Harry none of it was his fault.

Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff seeker and captain, had tried to arrange an rematch and void the win he made for Hufflepuff on the grounds of outside interference. I wouldn't want to win that way either.

No one had recognized me in the heavy rain with the dementors causing everyone's focus to turn inward. I confessed my failed attack to Sloth who wasn't happy I'd endangered myself like that. Even if I had no soul to steal, that didn't mean nothing they did could harm me.

That ill fated fight with the dementors forced me to confront something I'd been trying to ignore. Losing my soul bothered me more than I wanted to admit. Over scheduling my extra curriculars had been a way to not leave myself time to think about what losing my soul meant. My body had died a long time ago, and I considered myself the same person because I'd attached my soul to this homunculus body. Now that my soul was gone, was I still the same person?

Well, if I was going to try and distract myself like that, I'd be a lot better at it if I was doing it consciously and deliberately. I found an empty classroom and constructed a few hundred suits of armor like Alphonse Elric had his soul bound to. Then I carved a circle into each suit like I'd made for my chessmen. Touching a red stone to each array in turn, I brought the armored suits to life.

I made their minds simpler than the chessmen. They had no emotions. They felt neither joy nor sorrow, hope nor despair. They were cold and logical, built to obey my orders. Given the skills to fight and an ability to improve their skills in that area with experience, they would supplement Hogwarts' faulty security. Showing them a picture, I ordered them to distribute themselves throughout the castle, and to capture or kill Sirius Black on sight.

That was the work of an afternoon. I was thoroughly distracted from my existential crisis throughout, but it certainly didn't last long enough. Casting about for further distractions, I found my diminished alchemy ability with my soul missing. Now able to look at it as its own problem, separate from the existential crisis, I came up with a better solution than pre-built wands.

Sloth was able to improvise by drawing a fresh transmutation circle on a blank wand with her powers. Now that I was thinking clearly about it, I realized I could do the same. Taking hold of a blank wand with a red stone affixed to the end, I used my shape shifting ability to extend a tendril from my body along the length of the wand and reconfigure it into the form of a transmutation circle. With speed and improvisation back, I took some of the animals for the chimera lessons and retaught myself how to perform complex bio alchemy this way. It was challenging, and that's what I needed.

Meanwhile, classes continued. I took to drinking a cup of tea before bed and giving myself a reading. The extra practice paid off when right before the second Hogsmeade trip, two weeks before Christmas, I interpreted my cup as saying I would find a friend in an unexpected place.

Harry turned up in the Honeydukes sweet shop. Taking us aside and whispering in parseltongue, Harry explained Fred and George had given him an enchanted map of the Hogwarts grounds, which in addition to showing the walls, rooms, staircases and secret passages, also showed the location of every person, animal, and whatever else int he place with tiny dots labeled with their names. Harry had snuck out to Hogsmeade through a secret passage leading from the castle to the cellar of Honeydukes.

"I'll need to post suits of armor to guard the accessible tunnels," I said, making a note of where those tunnels were on the map.

After Hermione unsuccessfully tried to persuade Harry to turn in the Marauder's Map, we started to show Harry around. As it became clear Harry wasn't dressed for the winter weather, we headed for the Three Broomsticks to get Harry some butterbeer. I knew thanks to the Nazi experiments that I couldn't get frostbite, but I was still more comfortable at normal human temperatures.

Harry, Ron, Neville, Hermione, Sloth, and I took a seat near a fireplace. The foaming mugs of butterbeer warmed us inside while the nearby fire took care of the outside. As we drank, a strange group entered. McGonagall, Flitwick, Hagrid, and Minister Fudge. Harry ducked under the table while Hermione covertly moved a Christmas tree in between our two tables. After receiving their drinks, they invited Rosmerta, the proprietor, to join them.

"So, what brings you to this neck of the woods, Minister?" asked Rosmerta.

"What else, my dear, but Sirius Black?" replied the Minister. "I daresay you heard what happened up at the school on Halloween?"

"I did hear a rumor," said Rosmerta.

"Did you tell the whole pub, Hagrid?" asked McGonagall.

"Do you think Black's still in the area, Minister?" asked Rosmerta.

"I'm sure of it," replied Fudge.

"You know that the dementors have searched the whole village twice? Scared all my customers away. It's very bad for business, Minister."

"Rosmerta, my dear, I don't like them any more than you do," said Fudge. "Necessary precaution. Unfortunate, but there you are. I've just met some of them. They're in a fury against Dumbledore. He won't let them inside the castle grounds."

"I should think not," said McGonagall. "How are we supposed to teach with those horrors floating about?"

"Here, here!" agreed Flitwick.

"All the same," said Fudge, "they are here to protect you all from something much worse. We all know what Sirius Black is capable of."

"Do you know, I still have trouble believing it," said Rosmerta. "Of all the people to go over to the dark side, Sirius Black was the last I'd have thought. I mean, I remember him when he was a boy at Hogwarts. If you told me what he was going to become, I'd have said you had too much mead."

"You don't know the half of it, Rosmerta," said Fudge. "The worst he did isn't widely known."

"The worst? Worse than murdering all those poor people you mean?" asked Rosmerta.

"I certainly do," replied Fudge.

"I can't believe that," said Rosmerta. "What could possibly be worse?"

"You say you remember him at Hogwarts, Rosmerta?" said McGonagall. "Do you remember who his best friend was?"

"Naturally," said Rosmerta. "Never saw one without the other, did you? The number of times I had them in here. On, they used to make me laugh. Quite the double act, Sirius Black and James Potter."

"Precisely," said McGonagall. "Black and Potter. Ringleaders of their little gang. Both very bright, of course. Exceptionally bright, in fact, but I don't think we've ever had such a pair of troublemakers."

"I don't know," said Hagrid. "Fred and George Weasley could give 'em a run for their money."

"You'd have thought Black and Potter were brothers, inseparable," added Flitwick.

"Of course, they were," said Fudge. "Potter trusted Black beyond all his other friends. Nothing changed when they left school. Black was best man when James married Lily. Then they named him godfather to Harry. Harry has no idea, of course. You can imagine how the idea would torment him."

"Because Black turned out to be in league with You-Know-Who?" asked Rosmerta.

"Worse than even that, my dear," replied Fudge. "Not many people are aware that the Potters knew You-Know-Who was after them. Dumbledore, who was, of course, working directly against You-Know-Who had a number of useful spies. One of them tipped him off, and he alerted James and Lily at once. He advised them to go into hiding. Well, of course, You-Know-Who wasn't an easy person to hide from. Dumbledore told them that their best chance was the Fidelius Charm."

"How does that work?" asked Rosmerta.

Flitwick explained. "An immensely complex spell involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a single living soul. The information is hidden inside the chosen person, or Secret Keeper, and is henceforth impossible to find, unless, of course, the Secret Keeper chooses to divulge it. As long as the Secret Keeper refused to speak, You-Know-Who could search the village where Lily and James were staying for years and never find them, not even if he had his nose pressed against their sitting room window."

"So, Black was the Potters' Secret Keeper," confirmed Rosmerta.

"Naturally," said McGonagall. "James Potter told Dumbledore that Black would die rather than tell where they were, that Black was planning to go into hiding himself, and yet, Dumbledore remained worried. I remember him offering to be the Potters' Secret Keeper himself."

"He suspected Black?" asked Rosmerta.

McGonagall said, "He was sure that somebody close to the Potters had been keeping You-Know-Who informed of their movements. Indeed, he had suspected for some time that someone on our side had turned traitor and was passing a lot of information to You-Know-Who."

"But James Potter insisted on using Black?" asked Rosmerta.

"He did," said Fudge. "And then, barely a week after the Fidelius Charm had been performed..."

"Black betrayed them," finished Rosmerta.

"Indeed he did," said Fudge. "Black was tired of his double agent role. He was ready to declare his support openly for You-Know-Who, and he seems to have planned this for the moment of the Potters' death. But, as we all know, You-Know-Who met his downfall in little Harry Potter. Powers gone, horribly weakened, he fled. And this left Black in a very nasty position indeed. His master had fallen at the very moment when he, Black, had shown his true colors as a traitor. He had no choice but to run for it."

"Filthy, stinking turncoat!" yelled Hagrid, drawing the whole bar's attention.

"Shh!" McGongall tried unsuccessfully to quiet him.

"I met him!" continued Hagrid. "I must've been the last to see him before he killed all them people! It was me what rescued Harry from Lily and James' house after they was killed! Just got him out of the ruins, the poor little thing. With a great slash across his forehead and his parents dead. And Sirius Black turns up on that flying motorbike he used to ride. Never occurred to me what he was doing there. I didn't know he'd been Lily and James' Secret Keeper. Thought he'd just heard the news of You-Know-Who's attack and came to see what he could do. White and shaking he was, and you know what I did? I COMFORTED THE MURDERING TRAITOR!"

"Hagrid, please," tried McGonagall again. "Keep your voice down!"

"How was I to know he wasn't upset about Lily and James? It was You-Know-Who he cared about," continued Hagrid. "And then he says, 'Give Harry to he, Hagrid. I'm his godfather. I'll look after him.' Ha! But I had me orders from Dumbledore, and I told Black no. Dumbledore said Harry was to go to his aunt and uncle's. Black argued, but in the end, he gave in. Told me to take his motorbike to get Harry there. 'I won't need it anymore,' he says.

"I should of known there was something fishy going on then. He loved that motorbike. What was he giving it to me fore? Why wouldn't he need it anymore? Fact was, it was too easy to trace. Dumbledore knew he'd been the Potters' Secret Keeper. Black knew he was going to have to run for it that night. Knew it was a matter of hours before the Ministry was after him.

"But what if I'd given Harry to him, eh? I bet he'd've pitched him off the bike halfway out to sea. His best friend's son\\! But when a wizard goes over to the dark side, there's nothing and no one that matters to 'em anymore."

"But he didn't manage to disappear, did he?" said Rosmerta. "The Ministry of Magic caught up with him next day!"

"Alas, if only we had," said Fudge. "It was not we who found him. It was little Peter Petigrew, another of the Potters' friends. Maddened by grief, no doubt, and knowing Black had been the Potters' Secret Keeper, he went after Black himself."

"Petigrew?" asked Rosmerta. "That fat little boy who was always tagging around after them at Hogwarts?"

"Hero worshiped Black and Potter," said McGonagall. "Never quite in their league tallent wise. I was often rather sharp with him. You can imagine how I regret that now."

"There, now, Minverva," said Fudge. "Petigrew died a hero's death. Eyewitnesses, muggles of course, we wiped their memories later," I flinched, "told us how Petigrew cornered Black. They say he was sobbing 'Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?' and then he went for his wand. Well, of course, Black was quicker. Blew Petigrew to smithereens."

"Stupid boy," said McGonagall after blowing her nose. "Foolish boy. He was always hopeless at dueling. Should have left it to the Ministry."

"I tell you," growled Hagrid, "if I'd got to Black before little Petigrew did, I wouldn't've messed around with wands. I'd've ripped him limb. from. limb."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Hagrid," shot Fudge. "Nobody but trained hit wizards from the magical law enforcement squad would have stood a chance against Black once he was cornered. I was junior minister in the department of magical catastrophes at the time, and I Was one of the first people on the scene after Black murdered all those people. I-I will never forget it. I still dream about it sometimes. A crater in the middle of the street, so deep it had cracked the sewer below. Bodies everywhere. Muggles screaming. And Black standing there laughing, with what was left of Petigrew in front of him. A heap of bloodstained robes and a few-a few fragments.

"Well, there you have it, Rosmerta. Black was taken away by twenty members of the magical law enforcement squad, and Petigrew received the Order of Merlin, First Class, which I think was some comfort to his poor mother. Black's been in Azkaban ever since."

"Is it true he's mad, Minister?" asked Rosmerta.

"I wish I could say that he was," said Fudge. "I certainly believe his master's death unhinged him for a while. The murder of Petigrew and all those muggles was the action of a cornered, desperate man. Cruel. Pointless. Yet I met Black on my last inspection of Azkaban. You know, most of the prisoners in there sit muttering to themselves in the dark. There's no sense in them. But I was shocked at how normal Black seemed. He spoke quite rationally to me. It was unnerving. You'd have thought he was merely bored. Asked if I'd finished with my newspaper, cool as you please. Said he missed doing the crossword. Yes, I was astounded at how little effect the dementors seemed to be having on him. And he was one of the most heavily guarded in the place, you know. Dementors outside his door day and night."

"But what do you think he's broken out to do?" asked Rosmerta. "Good gracious, Minister. He isn't trying to rejoin You-Know-Who, is he?"

"I daresay that is his-er-eventual plan," said Fudge, "but we hope to catch Black long before that. I must say, You-Know-Who alone and friendless is one thing, but give him back his most devoted servant and I shudder to think how quickly he'll rise again."

"You know, Cornelius, if you're dining with the headmaster, we'd better head back up to the castle," said McGonagall. The group then got up and left.

No one quite knew what to say to that. Harry returned to the castle through the Honeydukes secret tunnel, while the rest of us returned via the main gate. Once back in the Ravenclaw common room, I filled Luna ion on what I'd overheard. We'd see Harry the next day and talk everything over as a group.

* * *

But Harry wasn't down from his dorm before the students going home for the holidays were shipped off. Luna promised she'd ask her father if he could tell us anything useful. Neville suggested those of us who were staying should give Harry space if he needed it. Ginny, meanwhile, ordered ron to keep an eye on Harry and not let him do anything stupid. Ron, Sloth, "Hermione, and I saw them off, then returned to the relative warmth of the castle.

"I've been thinking," I said, when we were back inside. "They aren't tailing Harry obsessively anymore. After the break, we can probably get back on track with those fencing lessons."

"Yeah, brilliant plan," said Ron, rolling his eyes. "Harry finds out Sirius Black betrayed his parents and you want to get him back on lessons about cutting people up with a sword."

"We can't control whether he decides to go after Black or not-" I began.

"Oh, yes we can," interrupted Ron. "I'm not letting my best friend rush off and get blown to bits."

"Ron's right," insisted Hermione. "Harry's just found out, and he's going to eb thinking of going after Black himself. If we can calm him down and make him see reason-"

"Is wanting revenge unreasonable?" asked Sloth quietly. "Black's the reason Harry's parents are dead and he had to go live with those muggles that hate him."

"It isn't about that," said Hermione. "Harry's no match for Black. All he could do if he went after him is get himself killed like Petigrew."

"That's why I want to train him. Arm him," I said. "That way, if he does want to go after Black, he'll have a chance."

"You heard what the Minister said," said Hermione. "Only trained Ministry hit wizards stood a chance against Black."

"When we all backed Harry up, Voldemort couldn't win," I said.

"Say, You-Know-Who, will you?" said Ron, irritated. "And we won, barely, against a young, inexperienced seventeen year old shadow of the real thing."

"The point is, Tommy was alone and we weren't. Black's also alone," I said.

"Tommy?" asked Sloth, giggling.

"Ron doesn't like me using his made up, self-bestowed moniker, so why not the muggle name he could never stand?" I replied.

"Fine," said Ron. "I still don't think we should let Harry do this."

"Do you think Harry has it in him to kill Black?" asked Hermione. "He stabbed the diary, but it was that or let Ginny die. Just imagine if he goes after Black and hesitates."

"That's a good point," I admitted. "I know how much more it effects you if what you kill has a human face."

"We're still teaching him and arming him," said Sloth. "And if he insists, Greed and I are going to be at his back, no matter what."

Ron and Hermione went up to the Gryffindor common room to wait for Harry. Sloth and I took Loki out to the snow covered grounds to get some exercise.

"I get why you went after the dementors," said Sloth, not looking at me. "They took something from you and you wanted revenge. I get it. But, Greed," she turned her head toward me. "You didn't take your own advice."

"What do you mean?"

"Did you bring every weapon you could? Did you let us back you up?"

"I-" I started, before realizing I didn't have anything to say.

"You were angry. So angry you weren't thinking straight. And that's what I'm worried about. I'll back up Harry if he's sure going after Black is what he wants, but he'll need to calm down before we set one foot outside the castle. If you fight angry, you make mistakes. Your attack on the dementors is proof of that."

"What mistakes? They're immortal."

Sloth laughed. "You've fought immortals before. And if you acted as stupid aas you did with the dementors when you fought me, you'd have been dead the first fight we had."

I couldn't argue the point. When I'd gone up against Sloth the first time, I survived it by keeping my wits, watching her carefully, and figuring out a weakness in a seemingly invincible foe. Hell, even Loki had worked out attacking head on wasn't working and tried something else.

"I won't go after them again until I've got a plan, and I'm calm enough to think straight," I promised.

Sloth put an arm around me, and we hugged.

"If we can convince Harry of the same, I'll be happy," said Sloth, tossing a stick for Loki.

* * *

Harry, Ron, and Hermione came plodding through the snow, heading towards Hagrid's cabin. Sloth, Loki, and I went to join them. Harry knocked and Hagrid answered the door.

"You've heard?" asked Hagrid, sobbing terribly. He threw his arms around Harry. The rest of us had to pry the massive man off Harry before he broke something.

We navigated Hagrid inside and closed the door, settling Hagrid into a chair. Loki found Fang hiding under hte table from the large hippogriff lying in a corner. Loki positioned himself protectively between the two.

"What is it, Hagrid?" asked Harry, indicating a letter on Hagrid's table. At Hagrid's prompting, Harry read it aloud.

The good news was that Hagrid wasn't being held responsible for the incident which had led to Draco being injured on the first day of classes. The bad news was that Buckbeak was being held responsible, and Lucius Malfoy had convinced the school governors to refer the matter to the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. There was to be a hearing in a few months.

"It's just a hearing," I said, trying to be comforting. "He hasn't been condemned yet."

"You don't know them gargoyles at the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. They've got it in for interesting creatures," sobbed Hagrid.

"I can't believe Lucius Malfoy's this petty," said Sloth. "He obviously knows Draco was just fine this whole time."

Harry, Ron, and Hermione seemed to have just noticed Buckbeak and started.

"I couldn't leave him tied up out there in the snow, all alone, at Christmas," Hagrid explained, trying to regain his composure.

"You'll have to put up a good, strong defense, Hagrid," said Hermione. "I'm sure you can prove Buckbeak is safe."

"Won't make no differenace," said Hagrid inconsolably. "Them dispisal devils, they're all in Lucius Malfoy's pocket. Scared of him. And if I lose this case, Buckbeak-" He drew a finger across his throat.

"What about Dumbledore, Hagrid?" asked Harry.

"Yeah," I agreed. "He's got enough pull to make worse things go away."

"He's done more than enough for me already," said Hagrid. "Got enough on his plate what with keeping them dementors outa the castle and Sirius Black lurking around."

"Listen, Hagrid, you can't give up," said Harry. "Hermione's right. You just need a good defense. You cam call us as witnesses."

"We can all testify that Malfoy provoked the attack," said Sloth.

"I'm sure I've read about a case of hippogriff baiting where the hippogriff got off," said Hermione. "I'll look it up for you, Hagrid, and see exactly what happened."

Ron made tea, and we continued to offer help and reassurances to Hagrid. Eventually, Hagrid calmed down.

"I've not been myself lately," said Hagrid. "Worried about Buckbeak and no one liking my classes."

"We like them!" said Hermione too quickly.

"We know the governors are interfering with your lesson plan," I said sincerely.

"And them dementors make me feel ruddy terrible and all," continued Hagrid. "Got to walk past them every time I want a drink in the Three Broomsticks. It's like being back in Azkaban."

"Is it awful in there?" ventured Hermione.

"You've no idea," said Hagrid. "Never been anywhere like it. Thought I was going mad. Kept going over horrible stuff in me mind. The day I got expelled from Hogwarts, day me dad died, day I had to let Norbert go.

"You can't really remember who you are after a while. And you can't see the point of loving at all. I used to hope I'd just die in me sleep. When they let me out, it was like being born again. Everything came flooding back. It was the best feeling in the world. Mind, the dementors weren't keen on letting me go."

"But you were innocent," said Hermione.

"Think that matters to them?" asked Hagrid. "They don't care. Long as they've got a couple of hundred humans stuck there with them, so they can leach all happiness out of them, they don't give a damn who's guilty and who's not.

"Thought of just letting Buckbeak go, trying to make him fly away, but how do you explain to a hippogriff it's got to go into hiding? And- and I'm scared of breaking the law. I don't ever want to go back to Azkaban."

* * *

Author's comments:  
In terms of threat level, difficulty to kill, and pure malevolence, dementors put homunculi to shame. No matter how many times I tried to trim or summarize the Petigrew backstory, I couldn't find a satisfying way to do it while maintaining the clues in the original material.


	21. Chapter 30: Good Intentions

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 30) Good Intentions  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Hagrid and Buckbeak's plight seemed to turn Harry's thoughts away from revenge. Protecting and aiding his friends in the here and now took priority for Harry. We got armloads of books from the library and found somewhere quiet to study and try to find something that would help Hagrid's case. As we studied volumes of wizarding case law, I decided that the occlumency lessons had proceeded far enough that I could safely pass on some important information.

"I have something that might help us prepare a case in time," I said. "The thing is, I'm not supposed to tell you about it, and I'm not sure how much trouble I'd be in for telling you."

"Greed, don't!" exclaimed Hermione. "You heard what Hagrid said. This isn't about school rules. This is wizarding law!"

"That's why I want to make sure you can keep a secret," I said. "Snape can't get at things you don't want him to, right? You're all at the point of just making your false thoughts more believable?"

"Yeah," said Harry cautiously. Ron nodded.

"Okay, this is a time turner," I said, pulling the hourglass pendant from under my robes. "It lets me go back in time in one hour increments. I've been using it to get to my classes that are scheduled at the same time as each other."

"You've had this all year?" asked Ron.

"Professor Mcgonagall made it very clear using them for anything but getting to class was against the law," said Hermione. "We aren't even supposed to tell people we have them."

"I knew there was something funny about your schedule," said Ron.

"Point is," said Sloth, picking up on my plan, "none of us are legal experts, and we don't have enough free hours in the day to become legal experts."

"Back in time?" asked Harry.

"You can't use it to change history," I said. "I checked."

"You checked?" asked Hermione paling. "Were you even listening when Professor McGonagall told us about the horrible things that happened to wizards who tampered with time? All those wizards who killed their past or future selves?"

"I needed more details," I said. "And I took precautions. I'm writing up a paper on my experiments and what I learned if you want to read it."

"Of course you are," said Ron.

"So you're saying we can use this to do the research for Buckbeak's case and not have to miss any of our classes or run out of time to manage our homework," concluded Harry. "That's amazing. And I was starting to think helping Hagrid with Buckbeak would mean not getting to do anything else over the holiday."

* * *

Between the time turner, Ron's extensive knowledge of wizarding law, and Sloth's ability to assimilate knowledge from books using red stones (an ability I particularly missed since losing my soul) we'd prepared a legal brief that was sure to get Buckbeak off if the judge was willing to listen at all. Hagrid called it the best Christmas present he could hope for when we dropped it off on Christmas eve.

Christmas morning came with a pile of gifts at the foot of my bed. There were a thousand different exotic sweets from Honeydukes. Luna had sent me five years worth of back issues of the Quibbler so I'd have something to read all alone in the empty Ravenclaw common room over the holiday. A large package from Mrs. Weasley contained some home made baked goods and a hideous orange sweater. I smiled and pulled it over my head.

Sloth had sent me a small metal disk with a transmutation circle on it. As soon as it opened, Sloth's voice came out of it. "This is a kind of alchemy powered recording device. I made it using the same technique you used for the chess men. You can tell it to record or play back any sound, and I gave it a perfect memory. You can tell me how much you like it and how impressed you are when you meet me at the front gate. I love you."

"I wouldn't have even thought of that," I said, turning the object over in my hand. Getting up, I headed downstairs to meet her, Loki happily trotting along behind me.

Sloth was wearing a sweater so pink my eyes took a minute to confirm she wasn't somehow on fire. She was holding the sneakoscope I'd bought her for her dorm room bed stand and getting a good look at the small, glass top.

"I love you, too," replayed my new recording device, drawing Sloth's attention.

"I see you got a sweater too," she said, taking a look at me.

"Yep," I said. "I guess helping rescue Ginny last year made us an honorary part of the family."

"There you two are!" called out Ron. He, Harry, and Hermione rushed over to us.

"You won't believe what happened," said Harry. "Luna was right!"

"Wait, right about what?" I asked.

"Scabbers," said Hermione.

"I still can't believe it," said Ron.

"Can you start over from the top?" asked Sloth, as confused as I was.

"Well, it all started around midnight," began Harry. "We were asleep in bed, and suddenly there are these loud whistles and shrieks that wake me and Ron right up."

"It turned out our presents were being delivered by house elves," said Harry.

"I have so many questions for the Headmaster about that," interjected Hermione.

"And it wasn't just any house elves," continued Harry. "One of them was Dobby, the one I'd helped from last year. Anyway, apparently someone sent us a bunch of sneakoscopes."

"That would be me," I confirmed.

"And they went crazy when the house elves brought them in," continued Harry. "The house elves thought they'd done something wrong and tried to punish themselves for it. I had a time of calming them down."

"Meanwhile, Scabbers freaks out and bolts out of the door," continued Ron. "As soon as he's gone, the sneakoscopes all turn off."

"So he really was an evil rat?" asked Sloth.

"And he ran off now that we were on to him," added Hermione. "We looked, but couldn't find him."

"I need to talk to Percy when he gets back," said Ron. "Ask where he got him from in the first place. And to think, I was considering using what you've been teaching me this year to extend his lifespan."

We continued to speculate on what Scabbers was and what he was up to, but there just wasn't enough information to get anywhere with that line of thought. I instructed my suits of armor to capture Scabbers on sight and bring him to me, just in case the rat was still somewhere in the castle.

When the five of us arrived at the Great Hall, the House tables had been moved asside, and a smaller table at which Dumbledore, Flitwick, Snape, McGonagall, Sprout, Filch, and three students I didn't immediately recognize were seated.

"Merry Christmas," said Dumbledore. "As there are so few of us, it seemed foolish to use the house tables. Sit down, sit down."

"Professor, we have something to report," said Ron without sitting down. "My rat, Scabbers is missing. I know this sounds strange, but he ran off after triggering a bunch of sneakoscopes. I don't know what it means, but with everything that's been going on this year..."

"Thank you for bringint hits to my attention, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore gravely. "If your pet should turn up, I would be most interested to examine him. In the meantime, have a seat."

Again without sitting, Hermione asked, "Where did this food come from?" Her tone was accusatory. She'd never taken that tone with a teacher, let alone the headmaster.

"The kitchen staff prepared it as they have for the past century or more," replied Dumbledore simply. "I expect they shall feel insulted if we let it go to waste."

"Miss Granger, what has gotten into you?" asked McGonagall.

"Slavery!" yelled Hermione. "Slave labor made this food, didn't it? The Malfoys keeping house elves, I understood, but I never thought my own school would be involved in something so despicable!" Hermione stormed out furiously. She'd obviously been holding that in until the warning about Scabbers had been relayed.

Hermione stormed right past Professor Trelawney, who'd arrived at just that moment.

"I'll go talk to her," offered Ron, following after Hermione. The rest of us sat down at the table,barring Trelawney, who was staring horrified at the table.

"The Hogwarts house elves are quite well treated," said Dumbledore. "Some, like Harry's friend Dobby, are already free elves, employed with pay and benefits. The others are all aware that freedom is theirs for the asking. I do hope you aren't letting this quite understandable misunderstanding ruin our dinner together. Have a seat, Sybill."

"I dare not, Headmaster!" exclaimed Trelawney, still staring transfixed at the table. "If I join the table, we shall be thirteen! Nothing could be more unlucky! Never forget that when thirteen dine together, the first to rise will be the first to die!"

"We'll risk it Sybill" said McGonagall, not quite rolling her eyes. "Do sit down. The turkey's getting stone cold."

Trelawney hesitated a moment longer, then took her seat. There was some sniping between Trelawney and McGonagall, but Dumbledore put a stop to it. The conversation returned to the house elves. Apparently, they generally considered being freed to be akin to being sacked in disgrace. They took a great deal of pride in their work, and further pride still in imposing as little as possible on their employers. When Dobby had been hired, the house elf had aggressively negotiated his salary down.

I resolved to verify this with Dobby and the other house elves. I wasn't particularly more comfortable with slavery than Hermione was. Dinner was otherwise uneventful until Harry picked up some food for Ron and Hermione and got up to bring it to them.

Professor Trelawney took Harry by his hands and said, "My boy. My dear, brave boy. You have already seen your fate was sealed, and now you rise first to prove it."

"The only difference Harry rising first will make is if a mad axe man is waiting outside the doors to slaughter the first into the entrance hall," said McGonagall, still without quite rolling her eyes at Trelawney's prophecy.

Sloth and I departed as well to look for the kitchens. Everything the small army of house elves said lined up with Dumbledore's earlier statements. Even Dobby, who was wearing clothes rather than altered tea towels, and thus was free from magical compulsions against saying things against their master, verified what Dumbledore had said. The Malfoys had been cruel to him, and he was glad to be free, but the others were happier still not being freed.

By the time we left, we had house elves so thoroughly praising us for our generosity of spirit for coming down and asking their opinions on things that we were both incredibly uncomfortable. We thanked them for their time politely, eliciting further howls of praise from the diminutive creatures over our basic courtesy, and left.

"I don't know how to feel about this," admitted Sloth when we were alone.

"I'm with you," I said, blinking. "I mean, they seem happy, but they act like basic courtesy toward them is the mark of a saint."

"Maybe we give it some time," suggested Sloth. "Wait until we understand better before deciding what to do."

* * *

Hermione, however, had made a firm decision. She was flatly refusing to eat anything prepared by the house elves, so Sloth and I expanded our lab garden and started quick growing food so she wouldn't starve herself. Ron was feeling worried and betrayed about Scabbers, who hadn't turned up. Harry was again stuck trying to deal with them, though fortunately, this time they weren't mad at each other. Still, everyone was happier when the term started up again and the other students returned.

Harry was being observed at his Quidditch matches closely, but within the walls of the castle, the staff had quit following him around. As a result, our fencing and parseltongue lessons could resume. Ron threw himself into his alchemy training as a welcome distraction from Scabbers. Snape's occlumency instruction resumed as well, though it seemed Sloth and I, at least, were reaching the limit of what could be done with the discipline.

In the first week back, Harry let us know he would need to miss our fencing lesson one day a week as Professor Lupin was teaching him to fight dementors in case of another attack next Quidditch game. I hadn't been invited, and I didn't ask to be. My powers were so different from Harry's that trying to train both of us at once was bound to be doomed to failure.

Instead, I attended the fencing lessons as usual, then got my invisibility cloak from my trunk, used my time turner, and went to invisibly observe the lesson. Professor Lupin had procured a boggart to practice with. Since Harry was terrified of dementors, that is what this boggart would become.

"So," said Lupin, "the spell I am going to try and teach you is highly advanced magic, Harry. Well beyond Ordinary Wizarding Level. It is called the Patronus Charm."

"How does it work?" asked Harry.

"Well, when it works correctly, it conjures a Patronus, which is a kind of anti-dementor. A guardian that acts as a shield between you and the dementor.

"The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon, hope, happiness, the desire to survive, but it cannot feel despiar as real humans can, so the dementors can't hurt it. But I must warn you, Harry, that the charm might be too advanced for you. Many qualified wizards have difficulty with it."

"What does a Patronus look like?"

"Each one is unique to the wizard who conjures it."

"And how do you conjure it?"

"With an incantation, which will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory."

"Right," said Harry.

"The incantation is this: Expecto Patronum!"

They practiced he wand motion and incantation, with Harry eventually producing a silvery mist the same color as the spectral phoenix Dumbledore had used to save me from the dementors. Then Lupin opened the case containing the boggart, and the wave of cold and despair flooded the room. It wasn't quite as intense as the real thing, but it was still overwhelming, and I found I had collapsed when Lupin forced the boggart back into the case.

I nibbled on some chocolate under my cloak while Harry and Lupin set up to try again. Twice more they tried it, before Harry managed to keep the wispy silver cloud hanging in the air. With the mist there, I managed to avoid being overwhelmed, and saw the dementor unable to pass the mist, as though it was solid.

While the training proceeded, Harry and Lupin talked. Apparently, Lupin had been a friend of Harry's father back when they were in school. He'd been hit hard by Sirius Black's betrayal.

When the lesson was over, I slipped back to the Ravenclaw common room to see if I could apply what I had learned.

* * *

While I worked on the dementor problem, Sloth was working with Hermione on the house elf problem. Sloth was always better than I was at political matters. Keeping Hermione fed was also good practice for both Sloth and Ron's bio alchemy. Sloth ended up strong arming Hermione into using her time turner to get more sleep, since the Gryffindor was running herself ragged with her full class load and house elf advocacy efforts.

They tried several times to interview the house elves in the kitchens, but kept being thwarted and sent away carrying cakes and sweets the house elves gave them and looked like they were going to punish themselves when they tried to refuse. Ultimately they changed tactics and hired Dobby as a consultant. As a result, they got to witness, first hand, the elf's negotiating tactics.

Between Dobby's explanations and their own research, they learned a great deal about the house elves and their situation. The house elves possessed a powerful magic of their own, in some ways greater than that of the wizards they served. Despite the wards blocking wizards from apparating in Hogwarts, house elves could do so freely. The magic which bound them to their masters was equally potent. If issued an order by their master, a house elf must obey. They can try to twist the order, and can act on their own when no order contradicts them, but they cannot disobey.

Culturally, house elves pride themselves on the services they provide. It takes a great deal of abuse for a house elf to even want to be free of their family, to the point that some wizards actually threaten to free their elves when dissatisfied with their service. The other house elves in Hogwarts look down on Dobby because of his being a free elf.

Mistreatment of house elves is common, and due to the nature of the relationship, often goes undetected. Wizard laws technically provide punishments for extreme abuse of house elves, but enforcement of those laws has varied considerably over the years. During the last wizarding war, when Voldemort was at the height of his power, every ministry resource had been dedicated to fighting him, leaving the house elves to fend for themselves. Voldemort's defeat had meant a return to normal operations for the Ministry, and thus improved things significantly for the house elves.

Hogwarts was apparently one of the better options, which was why Dobby chose to work here. Even under the nastiest headmasters, the combination of benevolent ghosts and ubiquitous living portraits meant that any abuses were reported and dealt with quickly. After a month of discussions, Hermione went back to eating the school food with everyone else and apologized to Dumbledore, who waved it off, noting she'd taken a stand out of compassion, something he hardly wanted to discourage.

Complicated as the situation was, there was one obvious ethical course of action, which Sloth and Hermione pursued while they pondered the larger issues. The laws against mistreating house elves weren't being enforced nearly strongly enough, especially against old, wealthy, powerful families like the Malfoys. A petition was being prepared for the Ministry demanding they improve enforcement, which they hoped to carry door to door on the next Hogsmeade trip. They'd already collected signatures from several teachers and recruited a number of students to help with the signature gathering. As a second prong to their efforts, Sloth transmuted a significant quantity of gold, which would be provided to the Ministry to pay for the additional enforcement efforts if they accepted the petition's proposals.

The main hangup was naming their advocacy organization. Hermione's first attempt was awkward and unwieldy, while her second had the unfortunate acronym of SPEW (Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare). The naming discussion was tabled after that in order to get on with the work.

* * *

I arrived at the Quidditch field to root against Harry and make sure he didn't die. After the first match, the dementors hadn't attacked a Quidditch match. I was under no illusion that my pitiful efforts had contributed in the least. This time, I was ready for them, though. I'd learned enough eavesdropping on Lupin's lessons with Harry to prepare a defense, and I had a vague idea of how I might hurt the amortal entities.

Palm readings I'd been doing in Diviniation kept pointing towards grief and guilt caused by rash actions, which had me nervous as I took my seat. It was a long game with a lot of twists and reversals, which helped take my mind off the prophecies. Then I saw them, three dementors coming onto the field and hte predictions rushed back to the forefront of my mind. I mustn't act rashly or it would come to grief.

My hesitation meant Harry had to take action on his own in the skies above. A great silver stag burst from his wand and charged at the black cloaked creatures. Terrified, they staggered backward and fell in a heap. The stag snorted at them and disappeared. The figures that struggled out of the heap of robes were Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Marcus Flint, the Slytherin Quidditch captain. If I'd enacted my plan believing them to be dementors, they would all be dead. My choice to take Divination this year had saved their lives.

I quickly marked that down as an accurate prophecy in my notes on my way back to Ravenclaw tower for the evening. I'd been keeping track of what was predicted, when, and by whom all year. Professor Trelawney's were the most accurate, with even her duds possibly just referring to things that hadn't happened yet. Sloth and I were also doing remarkably well, far better than random chance, and we were getting more accurate as we went. I would have thought this meant the subject was an objective science like potions, but for the fact that studious, logical Hermione was struggling.

After dealing with the irritatingly obvious door riddle, "Where do vanished objects go?" with "Nowhere. They just don't exist anymore," I sat down at the desk with my arithmancy book and my woodworking tools. I stayed up all night constructing a new wand, accounting for the magical correspondences between the wood, the core, and the measurements. As a result, I was the only one up when Professor Flitwick entered the tower.

"Marcus? What are you doing still up?"

"I got to working on this," I said, holding up the new wand, "and I guess I lost track of time."

"Well, I need to tell you, no one is to leave the tower tonight. The other teachers and I don't want to raise a panic, but I think you can handle hearing the truth. Sirius Black managed to get inside the Gryffindor dorms. Fortunately, those boys had enough sneakoscopes set up to make Mad Eye Moody call them paranoid, and Black fled. No one was hurt, but we're searching the school now."

"I understand. Thank you, Professor." 

* * *

I learned the next day that Black had gotten into Grffindor tower by somehow getting a list of passwords that Neville had written down and lost. In response, McGonagall had banned him from Hogsmeade trips, forbidden anyone from telling him any new passwords, and thrown in a detention for good measure.

"It isn't fair, McGongall blaming you," I said as I crossed blades with Neville in the Chamber of Secrets. "Security for all the common rooms is a joke. It's supposed to keep out pranksters. The rest of the school's security is supposed to keep out murderers."

"I just couldn't remember them. He changed them so often," replied Neville.

"And that's part of what makes passwords less secure," I said, probing for an opening in his defenses. "And didn't anyone think of telling the portraits what Black looks like so they can deny him entry, password or no password?"

I raised my blade a bit too high and Neville's blade of red light passed harmlessly through my midsection in a move that would have gutted me if the weapon wasn't in training mode. Sir Nicholas called a point to Neville.

"It's a good thing you got us all those sneakoscopes for Christmas or I reckon Harry wouldn't have survived the night," said Neville. "I saw Black on the way out. He had a knife."

"I want to know why none of my suites of armor saw him anywhere coming or going," I said. "They're stationed at every entrance, including the secret ones that are only on Harry's map."

"I've been patrolling since the first attack," reported the basilisk. "If I'd seen Black, I'd have petrified him."

"Thank you for trying," said Ginny. "We just have to keep our guard up."

I faked low and managed a strike on Neville's head, evening the score between us.

"Have you checked your map to make sure Black's not hiding somewhere inside the school?" asked Luna. "Since none of the armor guarding the entrances saw him."

Harry dropped his guard and was scored against by Ron. He quickly got out the Marauder's Map and checked it over. "No," he reported. "No sign of him on the map."

"So, unless he's in a chamber like this," noted Sloth, "he's hiding out somewhere off the grounds."

"You should turn that map in, Harry," said Hermione. "The teachers need to know about the secret passage to Hogsmeade."

"We can make them a mundane copy," I suggested. "That way, they can secure the passages, and no one needs to know what the real map can do."

"But you already secured them," argued Ron. "You put up those suits of armor."

"Which Black can apparently walk right past," noted Sloth. "Maybe he has an invisibility cloak."

"Snape figures he must be getting help from someone inside the school," I said. "He suspects Lupin. Maybe if we talk to them, we'll get more clues."

"Well, we're already meeting Snape for occlumency," said Harry. "That's as good a time to ask him as any."

* * *

"I do hope Mr. Longbottom's nearly fatal mistake was instructive for all of you," drawled Snape when we met for our occlumency lessons. "I can teach you to shield your thoughts, resist veritasyrum, and cast out possession, but none of that will make any difference if you carelessly leave information lying around. Notes, diaries, confiding secrets in the wrong person. All of the occlumency training in the world won't preserve the secrets you aren't committed to keeping."

"You're not talking about Neville," said Harry. "You're talking about my parents making Sirius Black their Secret Keeper."

"Well, well, you have been busy sticking your nose where it doesn't belong this year," replied Snape.

"You're also talking about Professor Lupin," I added. "Dumbledore doesn't want you saying anything, but you think he's helping Black."

Snape's eyes narrowed. "My opinion on the matter should have been simple enough to pick up, but how did you discover the headmaster's?"

"We overheard you talking on Halloween," said Ron.

"We won't tell Dumbledore you said anything if that's what you're worried about," said Sloth.

"What did I just get through saying about trusting the wrong person?" snapped Snape. "What in the world makes you so sure you can trust me?"

"Nothing," said Neville. "You've got every reason to want to isolate Harry from people who can actually protect him. Black isn't You-Know-Who's only servant outside Azkaban."

"And if I were the one helping Black," hissed Snape, "you've all been incredibly foolish letting yourselves be alone with me and then outright telling me your suspicions."

"If whoever is after Harry could move openly against Harry, they'd have done it by now instead of waiting for Black," said Ginny.

"Besides," said Luna cheerfully, "Neville never would have agreed to these lessons unless Slytherin's basilisk was watching."

On cue, the massive serpent from the Chamber of Secrets opened a parseltongue locked secret passage and fully entered the potions classroom, towering over Snape.

"T-That creature-" stuttered Snape.

"Protects the school," said Harry coolly. "The school and all the students in it. Salazar Slytherin was worried about traitors making an invasion of the school possible. She was his answer." Harry patted one of the basilisk's coils.

"If it turns out we can't trust you," said Neville, "she'll make you regret it."

"Well, this should be excuse enough," mused Snape as he sank into his chair. "If you do go to the Headmaster, I'm quite sure he shall excuse my telling you my suspicions now that you've threatened me with a thousand year old basilisk in pink earmuffs. Remus Lupin is a werewolf."

"We already know that," said Hermione. "You got us looking for the signs with your defense essay."

Snape smiled. "I'd hoped someone would be able to put the pieces together. But, yes, there's more than that. Lupin has been a werewolf ever since he was at school, where he was best friends with Sirius Black."

"And with my dad," said Harry, defensively. "Black betrayed all of them."

"Then why wasn't Lupin at Petigrew's side when he went after Black?" asked Snape. "Lupin was a far better duelist than Petigrew, and their chances would have been better two on one."

"Why weren't you there?" asked Harry. "You can duel and you owed my father a life dept."

"A life debt?" asked Snape, mockingly. "Where in the world would you get such a ridiculous idea?"

"From Dumbledore," said Harry. "He told me about how my father saved your life."

A dangerous look flashed in Snape's eyes, and he lowered his voice so it could be further laced with venom. "And did the headmaster tell you the circumstances in which your father saved my life? Or did he consider the details too unpleasant for precious Potter's delicate ears? I would hate for you to run away with a false idea of your father, Potter. Have you been imagining some act of glorious heroism? Then let me correct you. Your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn't got cold feet at the last moment. There was nothing brave about what he did. Certainly nothing worth a life debt. He was saving his own skin as much as mine. Had their joke succeeded, he would have been expelled from Hogwarts."

"And Professor Lupin was in on this?" asked Hermione.

"In on it?" asked Snape, amused. "He was the key to the whole thing. This amusing prank involved tricking me into visiting a certain location on the full moon."

Snape let that sink in for a long moment before saying, "Now the Headmaster has me brewing a wolfsbane potion so that our dear defense professor can retain his sanity during the full moon and not become a danger to the students. He can just change, curl up in his office, and sleep off his time while the rest of us pick up his slack."

"If there was no life debt," asked Harry, "why did Professor Dumbledore say there was?"

"To give me an excuse for saving you from the Dark Lord," said Snape. "It was my role to hate you, to be unfairly biased against the Boy Who Lived in a double potions class with the Slytherins, in front of all the children of former Death Eaters."

"Death Eaters?" asked Sloth.

"The name the Dark Lord gave his servants," clarified Snape. "They had to believe Iw as on their side if I was to act as a spy, and you had to believe the worst of me as well if the plan was to have any chance of succeeding. Your mind was an open book before your occlumency lessons."

"That explains how you acted with Harry," said Neville. "What about me?"

"You, Longbottom," said Snape, "are a danger to yourself and others. You melted your cauldron on the first day of class trying to make a simple boil cure. If I didn't watch you like a hawk every second you were in my class, I could have counted the survivors of your incompetence on my one remaining hand. There has been nothing unfair about my treatment of you."

Neville's confidence deflated in an instant. He blushed hotly and stared at his shoes.

"You've been spying on his servants and antagonizing Harry to keep up your cover?" said Hermione. "Why tell us?"

"Firstly, Miss Granger, because I am being threatened with a basilisk," said Snape, dryly. "Secondly, because I need you all to grasp how important it is that everyone continue believing we are enemies. The headmaster is the only person fully aware of my position, and it needs to stay that way. If you were to come to the conclusion that I didn't want Harry dead, and you didn't know you had to hide that information..."

"Why don't you want me dead?" asked Harry, drawing looks from the rest of us. "What? It's a legitimate question. He's been holding on to a grudge against my father twelve years after he died."

"Your father was a bullying, strutting delinquent who went out of his way to make my life miserable the entire time I knew him," explained Snape, "You bear an uncanny resemblance to the man, except that you have your mother's eyes. Your resemblance to James Potter makes it easier to play the part of hating you, but I am well aware you are not James Potter."

"He saved me," said Harry quietly, almost to himself. "When Voldemort came, he tried to fight him to give my mother time to escape with me."

"And where did you hear that fairy tale?" asked Snape.

"From the dementors," said Harry. "Every time they get close, I can hear Voldemort murdering my parents. I was just a baby, but when they get close, the worst things that ever happened to you come back crystal clear."

Snape was speechless.

"I think that's enough discussion for now," I said. "Maybe we should get back to the occlumency lessons."

* * *

Sloth and I were still getting remedial defense lessons with Professor Lupin, so we just brought the others with us at the scheduled time.

"What's all this about?" asked Lupin when we all crowded into the otherwise empty defense classroom.

"Are you really a werewolf, Professor?" asked Neville, still a bundle of nerves after our meeting with Snape.

Lupin put on an easy smile and said, "I won't deny it. How did you figure it out?"

"Professor Snape's essay," said Hermione.

"He'd be delighted," said Lupin. "He assigned that essay hoping someone would realize what my symptoms meant."

"You don't have to worry," I said. Gesturing to the others, I explained, "They know Sloth and I aren't human, and they haven't said anything."

"I see you're following in your father's footsteps, Harry," said Lupin, smiling. Harry didn't return the smile. "What's wrong?"

"My father," said Harry. "Snape said my father tried to feed him to you once back in school."

Lupin winced. "I thought Professor Dumbledore had sworn him to secrecy about that. That was why he resorted to that essay."

"We threatened him with a basilisk," said Luna cheerfully.

Lupin blinked. "Where would you eve get a basilisk?"

"From the Chamber of Secrets," said Ginny. "You must've heard about it being opened last year. It was in all the papers."

"Snape was telling the truth?" asked Harry, devastated.

"There's more to it, Harry," said Lupin quickly. "You should know the whole story."

"We're listening," said Sloth.

"Your father befriended me when I was an awkward outcast who got sick a lot," said Lupin. "When he figured out what I was, he didn't reject me. He even helped make my time transformed a little easier on me. This was years ago. The potion I take to remain myself when I transform hadn't been invented yet, so the only way I could stay safe was to isolate myself.

"James, Peter, and Sirius all stood up for me at school and kept my secrets. Severus was different. He was James' rival, and smart, even then. He worked out what I was from the timing of my illnesses. Sirius got the idea to tell Severus how to get where I was isolated. James found out about Sirius' prank just in time to drag Severus to safety."

"Snape thinks my father was in on it," said Harry.

"How did you stay friends with Sirius after that?" asked Sloth. "He tried to make you kill someone. That's got to have been your worst nightmare."

"Part of me thought Severus would've deserved it," said Lupin. "He'd hardly made my life easy, with his attempts to expose me. And it's not as though he didn't know what he was getting into. The whole point of following me was to prove I was a werewolf. But really, those three were my only friends. I couldn't bear to lose them. Of course, as things turned out, Sirius betrayed James to his death, murdered Peter, and landed himself in Azkaban."

"Professor Lupin, do you have any idea how Sirius Black keeps getting into the castle?" asked Hermione.

"We snuck in and out of the castle constantly as kids," said Lupin. "Add that knowledge to whatever dark magic he learned from Voldemort that's allowed him to escape the dementors, and it isn't surprising he's been able to break in twice."

"Professor Snape thinks you're helping him," said Harry.

"Of course he does," said Lupin, shaking his head. "It's not an unreasonable suspicion. But he cost me every other friend I had. I do think the dementor's kiss the Ministry wants him subjected to is excessive, but that's because I really wouldn't wish that fate on my worst enemy."

* * *

Author's comments:  
I do think there were a number of things about what we learn about Harry's parents' generation that didn't get enough emphasis in the cannon. Sirius really did try to murder Snape. Also, for all his bullying behavior, James did befriend someone no one else would have, and stood by Lupin after finding out his secret.


	22. Chapter 31: Can Do And Should Do

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 31) What You Can Do And What You Should Do  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Another Hogsmeade trip was scheduled soon, and now neither Harry nor Neville were allowed to go. Hermione and Sloth had finished preparing the petitions for the Ministry, and those in our group still allowed to visit Hogsmeade had been recruited to knock on every door in the village and get people to sign. It made for a long day. Twice as long as a normal day, in fact, since I used the time turner to knock on twice as many doors as was possible.

Sloth, Hermione, and I felt accomplished as we returned. Ron just felt tired and frustrated. He'd been hoping to visit the joke shop again. We came back to a whirlwind of bad news.

Harry and Neville had gotten into a fight when Neville tried to stop Harry from sneaking off to Hogsmeade. Neither of them were badly hurt, but they'd been caught by Snape, who managed to piece together what the fight had been about. Snape confiscated Harry's invisibility cloak and called Lupin to look over the map, which had been wiped clean at the time, so it wouldn't function without its passphrase. Lupin took the map for "examination" before privately revealing he knew full well what it was, and refused to return it and enable Harry to further endanger himself using it.

After the combination of Snape and Lupin lecturing him about all the effort being expended to protect him, Harry had apologized to Neville. Between making up and Lupin managing to get the pair out of punishment for the fight, things had been looking up. Then Harry had received a letter from Hagrid, covered in tears, informing him that Buckbeak had lost his case and was to be executed.

* * *

Our first chance to talk to Hagrid was at our Care of Magical Creatures class.

"It's all my fault," said Hagrid blankly. "They was all sitting there in black robes and I kept dropping me notes and forgetting all them dates you looked up for me. And then Lucius Malfoy stood up and said his bit, and the committee just did exactly what he told them."

"There's still the appeal," said Ron, trying to snap Hagrid out of his daze. "Don't give up yet. We're working on it."

We'd arrived back at the castle when Hagrid respond, "It's no good, Ron. The committee's in Lucius Malfoy's pocket. I'm just going to make sure the rest of Buckbeak's time is the happiest he's ever had. I owe him that." Hagrid was sobbing as he made his way back to his cabin.

"Look at him blubber," said Draco maliciously. "Have you ever seen anything quite as pathetic? And he's supposed to be our teacher."

My wand was in my hand before I'd properly worked out what I was going to do with it. Hermione skipped that step and slapped Draco hard across the face.

"Don't you dare call Hagrid pathetic, you foul- you evil-" Hermione spat as she wound up another slap. Loki growled low at Draco and took on his chimera form in a burst of blue and red light, causing Crabbe and Goyle to step back a pace.

Ron held Hermione back from hitting Malfoy again, so instead she drew her wand. The Slytherins ran for it, retreating into the castle dungeons.

* * *

Hermione didn't calm down all through Arithmancy, and when we met back up for Divination, she was only marginally less flustered. I was of half a mind to give Draco an injury as bad as the one he'd faked to get Buckbeak condemned. It was petty and small of him, and an innocent creature was going to die over it. It was enough to make me forget my own troubles for a while.

Professor Trelawney introduced the crystal ball earlier than originally planned. Each table had a ball filled with faintly luminescent gas that slowly boiled and swirled randomly. We were instructed to clear our minds and gaze into the mist.

As I stared, patterns started to become visible in the swirling depths of my crystal ball. The patterns triggered a brief flash of memory. A vague rectangle, and I recalled the Gate opening before me. A kind of lopsided pinwheel and my mind conjured an image of the marching Leto statues Father Cornello animated. Then I recalled something new, something I hadn't personally experienced. A fully formed memory somewhere buried in my subconscious of Harry and Hermione riding Buckbeak and opening a window for Sirius Black to climb out of.

Suddenly, I knew why divination was working for me and Sloth. We had seen the Gate. All the knowledge in the universe had poured through us, and even though we couldn't process most of it, we saw everything. The techniques of divination were a way of accessing what we had seen but not understood at the time. Any number of potential omens, meaning any number of things would always be available, but since on some level, we knew what was coming already, our attention would only be drawn to omens that genuinely reflected the future.

As I pondered the implications of a sufficiently large number of correspondences, gathered from five full years of training and practice, my concentration was broken by Hermione exclaiming, "Oh, for Goodness sake! Not that ridiculous Grim again!"

Professor Trelawney drew herself up and said, "I am sorry to say that from the moment you have arrived in this class, my dear, it has been apparent that you do not have what the noble art of divination requires. Indeed, I don't remember ever meeting a student who's mind was so hopelessly mundane."

"Fine!" snapped Hermione, who began gathering her books. "Fine! I give up! I'm leaving!" She stormed out.

It was sad. Hermione gave up the subject of divination at the same moment it really clicked for me. As one of the other students pointed out, this was another fulfilled prophecy for Professor Trelawney. She'd predicted one of our number leaving forever on our first day of class.

* * *

Just as divination clicked, and I was now certain I could do it, I hit a roadblock in Charms. Alchemy and magic would have been equally impressive to the young Marcus Oren who believed that the alchemy Father Cornello used proved he was a chosen of the sun god Leto, but the truth was, they were very different disciplines. Magic can't turn lead into gold or grass into bread. There were some things each discipline simply couldn't do. No Philosopher's Stone could ever enable me to make a bag bigger on the inside than the outside. I knew eventually I'd hit a hard limit on my ability to cleverly apply alchemy to mimic magic.

Today's class was cheering charms. Professor Flitwick paired us off and went over the incantation and wand movements. The whole time, my body was frozen as every ounce of mental energy was spent racing from one possibility of duplicating the effect to the next. Manipulating brain chemistry was hilariously dangerous, especially for an effect like this. I could relatively safely transmute the air in my partner's lungs into laughing gas, but names aside, that was more likely to anesthetize him than cheer him up.

Alchemy is primarily about manipulating matter, and feelings are as non material as it gets. If he were a homunculus, I could use the oroboros mark to make adjustments to his memories and mental state. The blood seal on a soul bound to metal might work the same way. But on an ordinary human, it wasn't possible.

For the first time since coming to Hogwarts, I didn't manage a spell. I'm certain I'd have felt awful about it if my partner hadn't managed to cast a cheering charm on me. As a result, I also didn't feel the dread that would've been perfectly natural when Professor Flitwick asked me to stay after class.

"Marcus," said Flitwick, "have a seat."

I sat down, a broad grin still plastered on my face from the cheering charms cast on me.

"I've been teaching a long time," continued Professor Flitwick, "and I've seen all sorts of problems students have with one spell or another. I didn't want to say anything in front of the rest of the class, but I've seen the problem you're having before."

"You have?" I asked, surprise temporarily dominating my emotions before I broke out into a short giggling fit.

Used to dealing with students in altered states of consciousness, Professor Flitwick maintained his composure and sincerity as he responded. "Yes, Marcus. You're thinking this spell is beyond you. That it'll never come out right, no matter how hard you work. Am I right?"

I nodded.

"You've been through a lot the last couple of years. Professor Lockheart and his attempt to silence you with his memory charms. The dementor that attacked you on the train. This is the first mind altering spell you've been shown. It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere, deep down, you don't want this to be something you can do."

He thought this was a mental block. He had no idea I'd faked every spell I'd ever performed in his class. Here he was, trying to help me, and I couldn't even tell him what was really wrong. I knew I was going to feel guilty once this charm wore off.

"Well, think about what I said, Marcus," concluded Professor Flitwick. "Exams are closer than they seem, and you'll want to perform your best. And remember, being able to do a charm doesn't mean you have to use it for real, nor does it make you the same as other people who've misused their powers. A charm is a tool, nothing more."

* * *

"I'll buy you a new invisibility cloak," Ron offered Harry when we'd gathered in the Chamber of Secrets for our fencing lessons with Headless Nick.

"I appreciate it," said Harry glumly.

"Harry-" started Neville.

"It was my own fault," said Harry. "You were right."

"Hopefully, Professor Lupin can use he map to catch Black next time he tries to break in," I said.

"I just wish there were some way to get my cloak back," said Harry. "It belonged to my dad. It's the only thing of his that got passed down besides the gold in Gringotts."

"Ah, there you are! Sorry I'm late!" called out Sir Nicholas as he entered the Chamber. We hushed and ignited our blades. Neville's flickered and died.

"That'll happen," I said, taking the useless hilt and replacing the burnt out red stone with a fresh one. "The power source doesn't last forever."

The year was coming to a close and we'd been practicing nearly every day together. We'd made more progress than I'd hoped for. None of us would be mistaken for a master swordsman, but we'd drilled on the basics enough that it had sunk in. Our sparring matches were no longer an exercise in keeping our distance and looking for an opening, but a quick succession of blocks and counterattacks. If I'd known a quarter of this all those years back, those Nazi chimeras would never have done as well as they did.

After the lesson, I caught Sloth. At my direction, we headed in the opposite direction as the Gryffindor ghost, to a corner where we could speak privately.

"We had cheering charms today," I reported. "How'd you do?"

"Professor Flitwick says I need more practice," said Sloth.

"What method did you use?" I asked.

"Nitrus oxide," she said. "I ended up sending my partner into a laughing fit. What about you?"

"I got hung up on the idea of manipulating emotions directly," I said. "I froze up and didn't end up managing anything."

Sloth nodded. "That's a first. You're usually three steps ahead of me on duplicating spells. Don't worry. Nitrus oxide works. It's just a matter of working out the dosage."

* * *

Back in the Ravenclaw common room, I had a book on drugs and medicines open on the desk I was at. Crudely sketched tables of body mass, uptake rates, and concentrations were spread all across every available inch of space. I was getting more and more flustered. No one would ever be able to accuse me of not knowing biology. I could, and had, made a working human body from scratch. But there were too many variables to get the level of precision I needed, and even when I looked at other drugs, the same problem arose.

"Is that arithmancy?" asked Luna, leaning over my desk.

"Charms," I said, more harshly than I intended. "Sorry. It's just, I've been working on this cheering charm for an hour, and I don't feel like I'm getting any closer."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Not unless you want to be a guinea pig."

"I thought you were working on charms, not transfiguration."

I laughed. Luna's deadpan delivery caused all the nerves and tension I'd built up to crack into a peal of laughter that quickly took on a hysterical tone. L:una didn't seem to mind and just smiled and stared until I regained my composure. That dam of nervous energy breached, I was thinking clearly again.

Why shouldn't it be possible to effect the mind of an ordinary human with alchemy directly? I could grab the mind and soul using alchemy and rip them out of the body, binding them to metal. I'd experimented with Sloth enough to understand how to manipulate the mind of a homunculus through the oroboros mark.

"I think I've got it," I said. "Can you come back by in about ten minutes? I need to design a new array. When it's done, I need a normal human to test it on."

"I don't think anyone's called me normal since I got to school," noted Luna. From the tone, I couldn't tell if she was flattered or insulted. "See you in ten minutes." She found a chair by the fireplace and got to reading a magazine.

Taking elements from the soul attachment array and the arrays for modifying the minds of my chessmen, I managed to put together an array capable of directly manipulating the thoughts, memories, and emotions of an ordinary human being. It would need a red stone, even if I did still have my soul. With Luna allowing me to test it on her, I confirmed it worked.

Professor Flitwick had been right. It was a mental block. And he'd been right about why I was blocking myself. As long as it was just hte handful of beings who had an obvious interface like a homunculus' oroboros mark who were susceptible to alchemy tampering with their minds, the problem was small enough that I could avoid thinking about it. Now I knew how to alter anyone's mind in any way I felt like at any time. Occlumency might prove a defense, but that still left the overwhelming majority of people vulnerable.

I didn't like the idea that there was knowledge people shouldn't have. As much as I valued the opportunity I'd had to learn, I genuinely wanted others to have the same opportunities. But this sort of discovery was why alchemists encrypt our research. For some secrets, there needs to be a limit, a gatekeeper. Otherwise, something like this could spell the end of free will.

* * *

Harry was being kept at Quidditch practice every day of the Easter holiday. The final match of the season was just after classes resumed. So, Ron's final exam in this year's alchemy lessons was held over the Easter holiday as well. I'd assigned the animals and the objective, and Ron spent much of the holiday sketching arrays and figuring out how to make it work.

The result of Ron's efforts was a serpent with brightly colored, feathered wings, and a crest of feathers along the top of its head. The wings were powerful enough to carry it aloft, and they could be comfortably folded back along its body. It wrapped itself around Ron's shoulders when he carried the completed creature into the room where Sloth and I could examine it.

At Ron's prompting, the chimera said, "Hello," in plain English.

"Do you understand us?" asked Sloth.

"Yes, I do," replied the chimera.

"Tell them what else," said Ron. They'd obviously rehearsed this.

"I have an extended lifespan," said the chimera. "I have the muscles of a constrictor as well as venomous fangs. My eyesight is enhanced, and Ron is teaching me how to read."

"Are you in any pain?" I asked.

"No pain," said the chimera.

"What about when you were made?" asked Sloth.

"No pain then either," said the chimera.

"Congratulations, Ron," I said, standing to shake his hand. "A talking chimera, produced only by mixing animals. You've proven you have an understanding of bio alchemy better than most certified State Alchemists. With three years of training, you've managed to accomplish something that the alchemist who made Sloth and Loki never could. I'm very proud of you."

"Have you given him a name?" asked Sloth.

"I'm going with Ratchatcher," said Ron.

* * *

Harry won the Quidditch game, earning Gryffindor the Quidditch cup this year. The following month was quiet with no dementor attacks and no new developments with Sirius Black. This allowed us all to focus on our exams.

My intense review of bio alchemy served me well in transfiguration, where I had to turn a tea pot into a tortoise. Professor Flitwick was beaming at me as I successfully emulated a cheering charm. Just like in first year, Snape's exam involved brewing a potion who's nature made it hard to think straight. In this case, a confusing concoction.

Runes, History, Arithmancy, Astronomy, Herbology, and Muggle Studies were all straightforward tests on the material. Care of Magical Creatures saw us caring for flobberworms again. It was so simple, Hagrid was able to inform us of the details of Buckbeak's appeal. Apparently, the Ministry was sending an executioner to the appeal, which was scheduled at the same time as our Divination exam. Ron tried to hand Hagrid a large sack of gold to bribe the committee with, but Hagrid wouldn't accept it.

Defense Against the Dark Arts saw us facing most of the creatures we'd learned about this year in a large obstacle course, culminating with a boggart in a trunk. I earned full marks, managing to use occlumency to make the boggart change from my mangled human remains into a pair of green plaid socks.

In Divination, we were called in one by one to do crystal gazing under Professor Trelawney's observation. I stared into the swirling mist and let my mind wander. I again recalled something I had seen in the Gate. A werewolf attacked Ron, and a large, black dog came to his rescue, fighting off the werewolf. Trelawney was listening intently as I described the scene. When I described the grim attacking the werewolf to save Ron's life, she sighed and noted I did well, but still needed practice on my interpretation.

After Divination, an owl delivered a letter from Hagrid to Luna and I. Buckbeak had lost his appeal and was to be executed at sundown. Hagrid's note said not to come, that he didn't want us to see. I had no intention of abandoning Hagrid to that grief alone. Luna and I grabbed our invisibility cloaks and headed down to Hagrid's cabin.

* * *

We weren't the only ones who came. Harry and Ron had shared a cloak, while Neville, Hermione, and Ginny each hid under their own. Sloth revealed herself along with the others when we'd all slipped into Hagrid's cabin.

"You shouldn't have come," said Hagrid. "None of you, but especially you, Harry."

"This was important," said Neville with a meaningful look at Harry.

"We won't let you face this alone," I said firmly.

Hagrid tried to make tea, but his hands were shaking so badly he dropped the milk jug which shattered on the floor. Sloth clapped her hands and transmuted it back together while Hermione went to get the spare out of the cupboard.

"I won't be alone," said Hagrid. "Dumbledore's going to come down while it... while it happens. Wrote me this morning. Said he wants to-to be with me. As for you, you're to go back up to the castle. I told you, I don't want you watchin. And you shouldn't be down here anyway. If Fudge and Dumbledore catch you out without permission, Harry, you'll be in big trouble."

"Ron!" called out Hermione suddenly. "Ron, look! It's Scabbers!" She'd clamped a lid down on the spare milk jug that the rat had been hiding inside for who knew how long.

"So, we found the evil rat," said Ron harshly. "I'm going to introduce you to my new pet when we get you back to the dorm." He took the jug from Hermione, carefully keeping Scabbers pinned inside with the lid.

"They're coming," said Hagrid suddenly, his eyes on the window. "You got to go. They mustn't find you here. Go, now. I'll let you out the back way."

We got under our cloaks as Hagrid showed us out. I felt awful. I could change their minds. Make them free Buckbeak and give Hagrid an apology for his trouble. My newfound alchemy array could do that and more. Minister Fudge was here. One flick of my wand and we wouldn't have to worry about petitioning to get our house elf agenda implemented. I could do a lot of good. I wouldn't, but I could. That fact made it harder on me when the others protested.

"Hagrid, we can't-"

"We won't let them-"

"We'll tell them what really happened-"

"They can't kill him-"

"Go!" ordered Hagrid. "It's bad enough without you lot in trouble and all. Go quick. Don't listen." 

* * *

Author's comments:  
Neville's always had his priorities straight. You don't break the school rules unless there's a good reason. If there is a good reason, he'll back you to the hilt. I'd been looking forward to Flitwick giving Greed good advice without really knowing all the details. He's been a teacher long enough and advised enough students that he can get the broad strokes even if he doesn't have all the information.


	23. Chapter 32: The Shrieking Shack

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 32) The Confrontation in the Shrieking Shack  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

As we headed back toward the castle, the sound of an axe falling reached our ears. Harry must've tried to turn back, because there were sounds of a struggle.

"We can't," said Ron's disembodied voice. "He'll be in worse trouble if they know we've been to see him. Ouch!"

Scabbers dropped to the ground and scurried out from under the invisibility cloak. He scurried in the direction of the forest, but was intercepted by Crookshanks. The kneezle had apparently been left to wander the grounds as it liked. No time to have a stern talk with Hermione about responsible pet ownership, we all tripped over each other's invisible feet trying to catch Scabbers as Crookshanks drove him towards us.

Crookshanks chased the rat, and we had to let our cloaks flap behind us rather than cover us as we did likewise. It was personal for Ron, who recaptured Scabbers with a flying tackle that sent him over Crookshanks. As we sighed with relief, the massive black dog from my vision shot out from a hiding place and closed its jaws around Ron's arm.

Wands came up, aiming at the dog, but no one could get a clear shot. Ron was dragged down a tunnel at the base of the whomping willow. We had to pursue. I pointed my wand at the murderous tree, and bands of red alchemic light wrapped around its limbs and held them fast despite its struggles to free itself. I held the tree as the others ran after the dog, then donned the Ultimate Shield and followed myself. As I was no longer holding it still, the whomping willow brought a heavy limb down on my head. Wood splintered form the impact, and I didn't feel a thing as I rushed into the tunnel.

The tunnel was long and narrow. Fortunately, it looked like the dog was dragging Ron to the end rather than rip out his throat the instant it had him in the tunnel. We were all running as fast as the low ceilinged tunnel allowed for, eventually emerging in a house with boarded up windows and ripped apart furniture. A streak in the thick dust led us upstairs.

Harry, Sloth, and Hermione went up first, with Ginny, Luna, Neville, and I following. Ron had been injured int he struggle. His leg looked broken. The first three on the scene rushed to him, before he could speak.

"Not a dog," said Ron through gritted teeth. "Harry, it's a trap. He's the dog. He's an animagus."

Sirius Black stepped out form behind the door and called out "Expeliarmus!" disarming Harry, Sloth, and Hermione using Ron's wand.

"Expeliarmus!" came the unified cry of the four of us who'd not entered yet when Black had sprung his trap. All wands were guided back to the hands of their rightful owners by a faint red light, leaving Black unarmed.

"You're not killing Harry!" said Ginny.

Harry's wand was aimed at Black like the rest of us (except Ron who was holding Scabbers), but uniquely, he was trembling with fury.

"You killed my parents," said Harry.

Harry and Sirius stared at one another. The rest of us might as well not be in the room.

"I don't deny it," said Sirius sadly, "but if you knew the whole story-"

"The whole story?" demanded Harry. "You sold them to Voldemort. That's all I need to know."

Black seemed ot have finally realized Harry was actually going to kill him, because his voice became desperate. "You've got to listen to me! You'll regret it if you don't! You don't understand!"

"I understand a lot better than you think," said Harry, unable to stop his voice from shaking with emotion. "You never heard her, did you? My mum, trying to stop Voldemort killing me. And you did that! You did it!"

I took a soul coin out of my pocket and said, "If you're going to do this, none of us will blame you." I put the weapon in Harry's free hand. The Ultimate Shield was still concealing my features. I must've looked the absolute part of a Faustian demon, because Harry hesitated. We all watched, waiting for Harry's decision.

Before Harry'd decided, the sound of footsteps came from the floor below. Hermione called out, "We're up here! We're up here! Sirius Black! Quick!"

Professor Lupin burst in through the door, casting a disarming charm powerful enough to send every wand flying along with that soul coin. Acutely aware of the danger that coin represented, I snatched it out of the air. Lupin, meanwhile, snatched all the wands out of the air.

"Where is he, Sirius?" asked Lupin tersely.

Black pointed at Ron.

"But then, why hasn't he shown himself before now?" asked Lupin. "Unless... unless he was the one. Unless you switched without telling me."

Black nodded. Lupin crossed the room and gave Sirius Black a hug.

"Professor Snape was right about you," spat Hermione. "You've been helping him all along!"

"You're wrong," said Lupin. "I haven't been helping him,, though I intend to start now. Let me explain."

"Does it have anything to do with Scabbers?" guessed Ron, going pale. Sloth took a red stone out of her pocket and used it to fix Ron's leg.

"I want to know this too," I said.

Lupin jumped when I spoke, as though he hadn't noticed me until now. He carefully looked over everyone in the room before asking, "Marcus? Is that you?"

"It's called, the Ultimate Shield," I said, withdrawing the carbon hardening from my head and making my face recognizable.

"I see," Lupin said. Then, regaining his thread, Lupin continued, "Yes, it is all about your pet rat."

"Is he evil?" asked Luna. Black nodded. "I knew it."

"You believe him?" demanded Harry.

"As I said, I can explain. Look," Lupin handed us all our wands back, and holstered his own. "There. You're armed. We're not. Now will you listen?"

"If you haven't been helping him, how did you know he was here?" asked Harry.

"The map," answered Lupin. "The Marauder's Map. I was in my office examining it-"

"You kow how to work it?" interrupted Harry.

"Of course I know how to work it," said Lupin. "I helped write it. I'm Mooney. That was my friends' nickname for me at school. The important thing is, I was watching it carefully this evening because I had an idea that you all might try to sneak out of the castle to visit Hagrid before his hippogriff was executed. And I was right, wasn't it?

"You might've been wearing your father's old cloak, Harry-"

"How'd you know about the cloak?" demanded Harry.

"The number of times I saw James disappearing under it," said Lupin, waving a hand to brush off the question. "The point is, even if you're wearing an invisibility cloak, you still show up on the Marauder's Map."

"Handy feature," said Sloth.

Lupin continued. "I watched you cross the grounds and enter Hagrid's hut. Twenty minutes later, you left Hagrid and set off back toward the castle, but you were now accompanied by someone else."

"Scabbers," said Ron, staring balefully at the rat that was squeaking and clawing to escape the young wizard's grip.

"That's not a rat," said Sirius Black.

"No, he's not," agreed Lupin. "He's a wizard."

"An animagus," finished Black, "named Peter Petigrew."

"Peter Petigrew's dead," said Harry. Then he pointed his wand at Black and said, "He killed him twelve years ago."

"I meant to," said Black hatefully, "but little Peter got the better of me. Not this time, though!"

Black lunged at Ron, murder in his eyes. Sloth put a hand on Ron's shoulder, but Lupin caught hold of Black and held him back.

"Sirius, no!" yelled Lupin. "Wait! We can't do it like that! They need to understand. We've got to explain!"

"We can explain afterwards!" replied Sirius, trying to break free.

"You can't touch him without my permission," said Sloth with an arrogant smirk.

"They've got a right to know everything!" argued Lupin, still holding back the escaped convict. "Ron's kept him as a pet! There are parts of it even I don't understand! And Harry! You owe Harry the truth, Sirius!"

That seemed to get through to him, and Sirius stopped struggling. "All right, then," he said. "Tell them whatever you like, but make it quick, Remus. I want to commit the murder I was imprisoned for."

"There were witnesses who saw Petigrew die," said Harry. "A whole street full of them."

"They didn't see what they thought they saw!" snapped Black.

"Everyone thought Sirius killed Peter," said Lupin. "I believed it myself until I saw the map tonight. Because the Marauder's Map never lies, Peter's alive. Ron's holding him, Harry."

"But, Professor Lupin, Scabbers can't be Petigrew," said Hermione. "It just can't be true. You know it can't."

"Why can't it be true?" asked Lupin evenly.

"Because-because people would know if Peter Petigrew was an animagus. We did animagi in class with Professor McGonagall, and I looked them up when I did my homework. The Ministry of Magic keeps tabs on witches and wizards who can become animals. There's a register showing what animal they become, and their markings and things. And I went and looked Professor McGonagall up on the register. And there have been only seven animagi this century. And Petigrew's name wasn't on the list."

"Was Sirius Black on the list?" asked Ginny dryly. From the way Hermione blushed and quieted herself, the answer was obviously no.

Lupin laughed. "The Ministry never knew that there used to be three unregistered animagi running around Hogwarts."

"If you're going to tell them the story, get a move on, Remus," said Black angrily as he continued to glare hatefully at the struggling Scabbers. "I've waited twelve years. I'm not going to wait much longer."

"All right," said Lupin, "but you need to help me. I only knew how it began."

Suddenly, the door to the room we were in opened of its own accord. Lupin looked outside and reported, "No one there."

"This place is haunted," offered Ron.

"It's not," said Lupin suspiciously. "The Shrieking Shack was never haunted. The screams and howls the villagers used to hear were made by me. This was where I was isolated during my school days for the safety of the other students.

"Do you recall I told you my friends helped make my time transformed easier? This is how they did it. By becoming animagi."

"My dad too?" asked Harry.

"Yes indeed," said Lupin. "It took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it. Your father and Sirius were the cleverest students in the school, and lucky they were, because the animagus transformation can go horribly wrong. One reason the Ministry keeps a close watch on those attempting to do it. Peter needed all the help he could get from James and Sirius. Finally, in our fifth year, we managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will."

"But how did that help you?" asked Hermione.

"They couldn't keep me company as humans, so they kept me company as animals. A werewolf is only a danger ot people. They sneaked outof the castle every month under James' invisibility cloak."

"That makes sense," I said, "but how does that figure into Petigrew still being alive?"

"So, that's the story you're feeding them," said Professor Snape, dropping an invisibility cloak on the floor. "Very useful Potter. I thank you.

"You're wondering, perhaps, how I knew you were here? I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a goblet full along. And very lucky I did. Lucky for me, I mean. Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you running along this passageway and out of sight."

"Severus-" started Lupin, but Snape kept on, a manic glint in his eye.

"I've told the headmaster again and again that you're helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here's the proof. Not even I dreamed you would have the nerve to use this old place as your hideout."

"Severus, you're making a mistake!" said Lupin. "You haven't heard everything! I can explain! Sirius is not here to kill Harry!"

"Two more for Azkaban tonight," said Snape. "I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this. He was quite convinced you were harmless. You know, Lupin, a tame werewolf."

"You're a fool," said Lupin almost to himself. Then, "Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?"

There were no words when Snape cast his spell that bound Lupin in conjured ropes. Black moved to rush Snape, but found Snape's wand already pointed between his eyes.

"Give me a reason," said Snape low. "Give me a reason to do it and I swear I will."

The pair stared one another down for a long moment. Neville was the first work up the nerve to speak.

"You can check their story," said Neville haltingly.

"Longbottom," sneered Snape without taking his eyes off Black, "you and the rest of Potter's little gang are already facing suspension from this school. You are out of bounds, in the company of a convicted murderer and a werewolf. Even you should be smart enough to know now is the time to hold your tongue."

"But if-if there was a mistake," said Hermione.

"Keep quiet, you stupid girl!" yelled Snape. "Don't talk about what you don't understand" Then to Black, "Vengeance is very sweet. How I hoped I would be the one to catch you."

"The joke's on you again, Severus," said Black defiantly. "As long as this boy brings his rat up to the castle' I'll come quietly."

"Up to the castle?" asked Snape rhetorically. "I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the dementors once we get out of the willow. They'll be very pleased to see you, Black. Pleased enough to give you a little kiss, I dare say."

"If Petigrew really is alive, isn't he the one you want to feed to the dementors?" asked Harry. He proceeded to snatch Scabbers out of Ron's hand and thrust him in Snape's face. "Check! If you're right, we call all watch the dementors suck out Black's soul together."

Harry's viciousness reached Snape, who bound Black as he had Lupin and rounded on Harry. "If it will silence all this nonsense the fine. Hold Weasley's rat tight and I'll cast an animagus reversal spell. If there's any truth to their nonsense, it will become a man. If it does not, you'll come along quietly. Agreed?"

Harr nodded, and Snape pointed his wand at Scabbers. A burst of blue light shot from Snape's wand and struck the rat, who did indeed transformbefore our eyes into a short, beady-eyed man with a missing index finger. Snape was stunned with shock. Fortunately, the rest of us were there to cover Petigrew.

"Let's hear the rest of what they have to say now, shall we?" said Sloth, as she waved her wand at Sirius and Lupin, causing their ropes to undo themselves.

"Well, hello, Peter," said Lupin with a mock friendly smile. "Long time, no see."

"Severus, you have to help me!" said Petigrew quickly. "They're going to kill me! He already tried to kill me once, and now he's got Remus thinking I was the traitor!"

"No one's going to try and kill you until we've sorted a few things out," said Lupin.

"Sorted things out?" said Petigrew in disbelief. "I knew he'd come after me! I knew he'd be back for me! I've been waiting for this for twelve years!"

"Enough of this!" yelled Snape, who lunged forward and grabbed Petigrew by the chin with his free hand and kept his wand pointed at his temple. "Potter, would ou and your friends be so kind as to keep wands on Black and the werewolf while I get the truth out of this rat?"

We complied, and Lupin casually raised his hands. After a moment, Black did the same. Snape stared into Petigrew's eyes. He squirmed and tried to break free, but Snape held him firmly in place. We'd been on the receiving end of Snape's legilimency all year, and knew full well what Petigrew was going through.

While Snape dug through Petigrew's mind, Hermione asked, "Mr. Black... Sirius? If you don't mind me asking, how- how did you get out of Azkaban if you didn't use dark magic?"

Black pondered while Petigrew squirmed. "I don't know how I did it. I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. That wasn't a happy thought, so the dementors couldn't suck it out of me, but it kept me sane and knowing who I am, helped me keep my powers. So, when it all became too much, I could transform in my cell, become a dog. Dementors can't see, you know. They feel their way toward people by feeling off their emotions. They could tell that my feelings were less- less human, less complex when I was a dog, but they thought, of course, that I was losing my mind like everyone else in there, so it didn't trouble them. But I was weak, very weak, and I had no hope of driving them far away from me without a wand.

"But then I saw Peter in this picture." Black pulled a clipping from the Daily Prophet showing Ron making gold with Scabbers perched on his shoulder. "I realized he was at Hogwarts with Harry, perfectly positioned to act if one hint reached his ears that the dark side was gathering strength again. Ready to strike the moment he could be sure of allies, and to deliver the last Potter to them.

"If he gave them Harry, who'd dare say he'd betrayed Lord Voldemort? He'd be welcomed back with honors. So, you see, I had to do something. I was the only one who know Peter was still alive.

"It was as if someone had lit a fire in my head, and the dementors couldn't destroy it. It wasn't a happy feeling. It was an obsession, but it gave me strength. It cleared my mind. So, one night when they opened my door to bring me food, I slipped past them as a dog. It's so much harder for them to sense animal emotions that they were confused. I was thin, thin enough to slip through the bars. I swam as a dog back to the mainland. I journeyed north and slipped into the Hogwarts grounds as a dog. I've been living in the forest ever since, except when I came to watch the Quidditch of course. You fly as well as your father did, Harry."

At that moment, Snape threw Petigrew contemptuously to the ground, and again cast the spell to bind a target in conjured ropes. "It seems we shall have to drag this creature to the castle after all. He was the Potters' Secret Keeper, not Black. Fortunately, the Minister of Magic is in attendance and should be able to sort this whole business out."

Sirius leaned over the prone Petigrew and said, "If you transform, Peter, we will kill you."

* * *

All of us covered Petigrew as we climbed through the tunnel.

"You know what this means?" asked Black. "Turning Petigrew in?"

"You're free," said Harry.

"Yes, but I'm also," said Black, "I don't know if anyone ever told you. I'm your godfather."

"Yeah, I know that," said Harry.

"Well," persisted Black awkwardly, "your parents appointed me guardian if anything happened to them. I'll understand, of course, if you want to stay with your aunt and uncle, but, well, if you wanted a... a different home."

"What? live with you?" asked Harry, unsure.

"If that's what you want, Harry, we'll support you," said Sloth.

"Of course, we'll be checking up regularly if you do go," I added.

"I- I don't know," said Harry.

"Of course," said Black. "I thought you wouldn't want to. I understand. I just thought I'd-"

"I didn't say no," said Harry.

"You can work out your living arrangements once we've delivered Petigrew to the castle, Potter," said Snape.

Crookshanks pressed on the knot that paralyzed the whomping willow, and we exited the tunnel. We were still a ways from the castle when Lupin froze, and began transforming. Moonlight had flooded hte grounds.

"He didn't take his potion tonight!" exclaimed Hermione. "He's not safe!"

"Run. Run now," said Black. "Leave it to me. Run!" Black charged at Lupin, changing into his black dog form, and shoulder checked Lupin away from the rest of us. Hexes and curses flew from various wands, but Snape's essay had left one thing clear about fighting werewolves. Nonfatal spells didn't have any effect on a werewolf.

While Lupin had our attention, Petigrew rolled and managed to grab Lupin's dropped wand. A flash of magical energy hit snape square in the chest, knocking him unconscious. Harry disarmed Petigrew, but the animagus took the opportunity to transform and dart off through the tall grass.

Lupin fled, and Black charged off in the direction Petigrew had scurried off in. Snape needed Madam Pomfrey's help. We were working out how to get him there when in the distance, a dog yelped in pain. Harry clutched his wand and ran off in that direction.

"No!" I called after Harry. Then I turned to the others. "Sloth and I'll go after Harry and Sirius. Werewolf bites can't hurt us. You get Snape up to the castle."

I covered my head with the Ultimate Shield and ran after Harry. Sloth ran at my side. We came upon Harry and Sirius, now back in human form, on a lake shore in the forbidden forest. A hundred dementors glided across the lake.

Black was curled up in a ball, muttering, "no," over and over. Sloth's knees gave out, and she collapsed. Harry was calling out, "Expecto Patrunum," and conjuring a faint silvery mist to shield himself, but the effort was clearly draining him. I strode toward the dementors. I felt more like myself than I had all year. A smirk was playing on my lips.

"The last time we fought, I wasn't thinking straight," I told the dementors. "That's your big advantage, isn't it? You aren't particularly strong." I gripped the wrist of the nearest dementor, lifted it up, then slammed it to the ground. "You give the illusion of superhuman strength because by the time anyone's close enough to test you, you've already drained away their will to fight."

The dementors halted their advance. Sightless faces turned in my direction, and the temperature lowered. A thin layer of frost began to form under my feet.

"You can't feed off me anymore," I said with a note of satisfaction. I tapped a small metal pin on my robes with a transmutation circle etched into it. "It's the same principle as a patronus. A consciousness filled with nothing but happiness and joy, incapable of sorrow or despair. While I'm wearing this, your powers can't touch me."

As I expected, the full hundred dementors began to glide through the air toward me. Harry succumbed to exhaustion, his faint patronus attempt going out. Scabbed hands reached out towards me, seeking to physically remove the source of my protection. When they had clustered together, I waved my wand at the ground beneath them. Sparks of red light accompanied hundreds of chains springing from the ground beneath the dementors and latching manacles around their limbs.

"I realized something else about you when I calmed down enough to think straight," I said. "You get hungry. And there's no reason for creatures, magical or mundane, to feel hungry unless it can starve."

The dementors tugged pointlessly against the metal chains. They understood, and they were sentient enough to feel fear.

"No amount of physical force can harm you," I said with a shrug. "That doesn't mean you don't die. I'm a bit curious how long it will take, but I think I can live with not knowing. Goodbye."

I slashed my wand toward the ground and the chains retracted into it. As the dementors were dragged down, the earth opened up to accommodate them, red light pouring from the opening. The creatures struggled futilely to escape. The ground closed up when the last dementor was pulled under. Entombed a hundred feet beneath the ground, the dementors could no longer drain the hope and life from those on the surface. Sloth and Harry started to revive.

"Here, eat this," I said, putting a piece of chocolate in Sloth's mouth.

"What happened?" she asked, looking around.

"I killed them," I said. "You were right. The important thing was to make sure I was thinking straight." I gave Harry some chocolate saying, "I'll tell you all about it later. For now, we need to get everyone back to the castle."

"Back to the castle?" asked Harry coming around. "No! We don't have Petigrew! We have to catch him!"

"Sirius isn't coming around," I pointed out. "We don't know which of those wounds, if any, were from Lupin. He isn't aware enough to get him to eat the chocolate I brought. If he doesn't get to Madam Pomfrey he'll die."

"Once we're at the castle, I'll head straight for Lupin's office," offered Sloth. "If Petigrew's anywhere on the grounds, the map'll help us find him."

Reluctantly, Harry agreed. Sloth transmuted a stretcher, which Harry and I used to carry Black. At the castle gate, we saw Minister Fudge.

"Harry, thank goodness, you're alright. When we got word you were out with- Is that Sirius Black?"

"Yes," said Harry as Sloth ran off. "He needs help. We've got to get him to the hospital wing. The dementors-"

At that point, two nearby suits of armor grabbed Sirius off the stretcher.

"Take him to the hospital wing," I ordered the armor. "And spread the word that Black is no longer to be captured or killed."

"What?" asked the Minister of Magic as the two suits of armor nodded and went to carry out my instructions.

"They're mine," I said. "A gift from my family to improve security at the school once word got to us about Black's escape."

"I see," said Fudge, nodding.

We then launched into an explanation about what we'd learned and Sirius' innocence. Fudge waved us off.

"No, no, your friends already explained this. They're waiting for you in the hospital wing. You ought to get checked out as well."

Sighing with relief, we followed Fudge to the hospital wing. I'd be able to get my armored minions searching for Petigrew once we were there. It was bound to be easier now that I knew what both forms of the target looked like.

"What was the meaning of sending Sirius Black here?" demanded Madam Pomfrey. "Unconscious or no, I can't have him upsetting my other patients."

"Unavoidable, I'm afraid," said Fudge, apologetically. "I'll have him moved to a room with a lock until we can sort this matter out."

Buckbeak's executioner arrived to carry Sirius off. The Minister left wiht him. I issued new orders to the armors, and finally, we were let in to see the others while Madam Pomfrey looked us over. Snape was still unconscious from whatever Petigrew had hit him with. Everyone else was up and agitated.

"You shouldn't have brought Sirius back here," said Ron. "They don't believe us about Petigrew."

"They think we've been confounded," huffed Hermione.

Harry's spirits fell and he sat down on a bed. Madam Pomfrey came by, forcing chocolate on us for our dementor exposure. Sloth arrived back, reporting, "He's gone," and returning the Marauder's Map to Harry.

Dumbledore came in shortly, and arranged to speak privately with us. He'd spoken with Black, who'd revived in his tower cell, and was convinced of his story. Unfortunately, he couldn't convince Fudge we were telling the truth. Ultimately, the only thing Dumbledore thought could convince Fudge was bringing him Petigrew. Apparently, Fudge was contacting the Ministry to send another dementor to perform the Kiss on Black.

"What we need," said Dumbledore meaningfully, "is more time. Now, pay attention. Sirius is locked in Professor Flitwick's office on the seventh floor, thirteenth windows from the right of the West Tower. If all goes well, you will be able to save more than one innocent life tonight, but remember, you must not be seen. Miss Granger, Mr. Oren, you know the law. You know what is at stake. You must not be seen.

"I am going to lock you in. It is... five minutes to midnight. Three turns should do it. Good luck."

The door closed behind Dumbledore, and I started to speak quickly, getting out my time turner. "Harry, you have to go with Hermione. Rescue Buckbeak and use him to get Sirius out. I'll go after Petigrew."

"What about us?" asked Sloth.

"The more people in the past, the more chances something could go wrong," I explained.

"Then why's Harry going with Hermione?" asked Ron.

"Because I saw a vision of the plan working when we started in on the crystal ball," I said. "Harry and Hermione were the ones riding Buckbeak."

"You'll need this," said Neville, offering an invisibility cloak to Harry. "It's the one Professor Snape was using. You said it belonged to your dad."

"Thanks, Neville," said Harry, accepting his cloak.

I focused my thoughts. If I landed in the past anywhere but right in front of Petigrew, I needed to find my past self and deliver a paradoxical message. I turned over my time turner and felt the familiar sensation of rushing backward. Then, I landed with a splash in the ocean.

* * *

The swimming lessons I'd taken allowed me to stay afloat well enough to confirm that Petigrew wasn't here, and that shore was not visible. I quickly transmuted a boat out of ice then tried to get my bearings.

Astronomy class came to my rescue. I knew the date and time, so I was able to verify my position using the stars. I was miles from Hogwarts. Apparently, the one place I'd committed to not cause paradox was also a place I would cause a paradox by arriving at, so again, I was deposited too far away to cross my own timeline.

That did mean it was possible to get back to Hogwarts within the hour, since I was always deposited the minimum paradox free distance from my past self. I used more ice to construct a makeshift broomstick, planted my spare red stone in the end of it, and took off back for Hogwarts. When I approached the school, Sirius Black flew past me riding Buckbeak the hippogriff. They'd managed their part, at least. I pulled out my red stone, left my broom to melt, and rushed up to the infirmary under my invisibility cloak.

Harry and Hermione removed their cloaks at the same time as I did.

"Well?" asked Dumbledore.

"We did it!" reported Harry. "Sirius has gone on Buckbeak!"

I shook my head. "Petigrew still escaped. It was all I could do to get back to the castle."

"The important thing is Sirius is alive," said Dumbledore. "Well done. Other opportunities to clear Sirius' name will come, now that we know the truth. Now, get inside. I'll lock you in."

Dumbledore had given us an airtight alibili for Black's escape, and Black escaping drew the Minister's attention away from Buckbeak.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Prophecies represent a potential point of paradox. Trelawney still predicted Petigrew escaping, and that meant a time turner couldn't capture him. Still, this time around, Snape knows full well what's going on, and won't have to wait until the end of fourth year to find out about Sirius' innocence.


	24. Chapter 33: The Value of Time Travel

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 33) The Value of Time Travel  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

We learned the next day that Professor Lupin had resigned. After transforming and nearly killing us all, he was convinced he had no place in a school. We all bade him a fond farewell and expressed our gratitude for all he'd taught us this year.

At my urging, Sloth and I slipped away down into the lab once we'd said our goodbyes to Lupin.

"Black was innocent and Petigrew escaped," I said. "I got my payback on the dementors, but I'm still down one soul."

"You finally decided to take me up on my offer to use mine?" asked Sloth.

"No," I said. "I decided to just get my old one back."

"How?" asked Sloth.

"The answer's right here," I said, pointing to a blank wall in the lab. "Open up an arch there. There's a room behind it."

Sloth clapped her hands and pressed them to the wall, revealing a small room containing my petrified body. I handed her a bottle of Madrake draught I'd taken off a shelf when she was transmuting.

"Wake him up once I'm gone," I instructed. I began turning my time turner over and over again, carefully counting out hte number I'd calculated. Hours in a day, days in a month, months in a year. I stopped and felt myself pulled backward.

I arrived on the Hogwarts Express and quickly pulled on my invisibility cloak. I found my past self and silently observed. Finally, the moment came. The dementor entered. Protected by my patronus pin, I watched my past self succumb. Timing was essential. As the dementor leaned over my past self, I took a soul coin and pressed it against past me's oroboros mark. Covertly, I pressed the coin to present me's oroboros mark. I'd stolen my own soul before the dementor could get it.

My primary mission accomplished, I hid on the train until we reached the school. I slipped into the Chamber of Secrets and asked the basilisk a favor. A future version of me appeared and at my request, the basilisk petrified him. It was awkward carrying my petrified future self out to the Quidditch field under my invisibility cloak, but I managed it.

I used alchemy to emulate Sloth's Ultimate Escape and entered the lab. I found the wall, clapped my hands, and constructed the room we would find at the end of the year. I carefully deposited my future self inside, then sealed of the room. Then I gave my time turner one last spin, arriving in the Chamber of Secrets to be petrified by Slytherin's basilisk.

The next thing I knew, I was being revived by Sloth at the end of the year.

"It worked," I told her. I then went into the details. As I hoped, she was impressed.

* * *

On the train ride back home, Hermione told us she was dropping Muggle Studies and had turned in her time turner. I was baffled. She was doing well in all her classes, and Sloth had gotten her on a more regular sleep schedule. I certainly had no intention of ever returning mine.

News from Sirius came in the form of a letter. He'd made it out of the country, and was planning to get spotted deliberately to ensure the Ministry wouldn't be sending dementors to Hogwarts next year. He also included a note granting Harry permission to visit Hogsmeade, on his authority as Harry's godfather.

Ron invited us to join his family to see the Quiditch world cup this summer. Luna and her father already had plans to go, and the rest of us gladly accepted.

Just like last year, Harry elected to get his one night with the Dursleys out of the way early. Due to the circumstances he'd fled under last year, Sloth went with him to ensure his safety. Using her shapeshifting powers, Sloth disguised herself as Hedwig, mostly so she could avoid talking to the members of that household while she was protecting Harry. I used the real Hedwig to send a letter to Remus Lupin, inviting him over to discuss employment oportunities. Once the letter was off, I headed off to see a travel agent.

* * *

Sloth and I had reverted to our default forms for the summer, and were seated around the kitchen table with Harry working on our summer homework. Spellbooks, rolls of parchment, and inkwells had the table completely covered. A knock came at the front door.

Without close examination, none of the materials we had out were at all indicative of witchcraft, so HArry went to answer the door. Sloth, Loki, and I followed behind to see who it was.

"Professor Lupin?" said Harry surprised.

"Hello, Harry," replied Lupin. "It's good to see you again."

"I invited him," I said, shaking Lupin's hand. "Come in."

Lupin eyed Sloh and I for a moment before recognition dawned. "I knew the two of you were shape shifters. So, would these be your real forms?"

"More like default ones," Sloth said. "Would you like some tea?"

"That would be wonderful, thank you," said Lupin, taking a seat in the living room. "So, to answer Harrys' question, why am I here?"

"I want to hire you as a tutor for Harry over the summer," I said.

"Just for Harry?" Lupin asked.

"You know our powers are different from his," I said. "Besides, we can already turn into animals."

"You mean become an animagus, like my dad?" asked Harry.

"If Professor Lupin will consent to teach," I said, accepting a tea cup from Sloth.

"You are aware that it took your father until well into his fifth year before he managed this, right, Harry?" said Lupin.

"He was working in secret and had to figure the process out without help from someone who already knew how to do it," I countered. "I've got to figure a qualified teacher makes this easier, not to mention safer."

"We're offering triple what Dumbledore paid you last year," added Sloth.

Lupin laughed. "I'm certainly in no position to turn down paying work, but I left teaching at Hogwarts to avoid endangering students."

"But you're only dangerous on the full moon," argued Harry.

"Quadruple your Hogwarts salary," added Sloth.

"I did get benefits too," said Lupin slyly.

"You'll do it?" asked Harry happily.

"On condition that I am far away from you on the entire week around the full moon," said Lupin. "I don't have Snape brewing my potion anymore, and I can't risk another incident like last year."

"I've been thinking about that," I mused. "Harry, how do you feel about taking a trip to Australia this summer?"

"Like those trips Hermione takes with her parents?" asked Harry, confused.

"More of a research trip," I said with a smirk. "Not to say we can't see the sights while we're there."

"What's all this about?" asked Lupin. Even Sloth was staring at me confused.

"Do you two remember everything we learned about werewolves in second year?" I asked Sloth and Harry.

"We didn't learn anything," said Harry, deadpan. "Lockheart was teaching."

"Exactly!" I said, and pulled a copy of Wandering with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockheart out of my bag. I opened it to my bookmark. "Lockheart says here that he cured a werewolf in the town of Wagga Wagga. I checked in with a travel agent and found out it was in Australia."

Lupin's eye twitched at the sight of the book with Lockheart's picture winking from the cover. Sloth and Harry both rolled their eyes.

"This is a joke," said Lupin. "You took classes with Gilderoy Lockheart. You have to have realized you can't trust anything in his books. The man was an absolute fraud."

"He was," confirmed Sloth, looking at me like I'd gone crazy.

"Guys, come on," I prodded. "Yes, Lockheart was a fraud, but don't you remember what else we learned about him?"

"Why don't you just tell us," said Harry, now somewhat irritated.

"He didn't make up his stories," I said in exasperation. "He told us that he tracked down witches and wizards who'd done things, got them to tell him about it, then used a memory charm to make them think he'd done it."

"Which means," said Harry, working it the rest of the way out, "there's an ugly Armenian warlock out there who really did cure a werewolf."

* * *

Lupin began teaching Harry what he'd need to know about the animagus transformation process while I secured the travel papers we'd need. Sloth and I didn't officially exist, the Dursleys were Harry's legal guardians, and I doubted Lupin had been in any muggle database since he was eleven. It wasn't long before I stopped feeling even slightly guilty about all the officials I was bribing.

Trying to go through the magical world would have been harder than the week long trek through muggle Britain's red tape. Sloth and I only existed as far as the Ministry of Magic was concerned because of Dumbledore's say so and the vague hope no one would question our story. And I didn't want to think of the uproar that would come if they got wind that the Boy Who Lived was being taken out of the country accompanied by a werewolf.

"We're not going to miss the World Cup, are we?" asked Harry while we waited in the airport. Loki was on a leash and curled up at my feet and Hedwig's cage was covered and occupying a seat next to Harry.

"Our return tickets are for two weeks before the cup," I said. "I made sure we'd be okay even if there was a delay."

"It's been a while since we rode in one of these, hasn't it, Greed?" said Sloth, kicking her feet back and forth as they dangled off her chair.

"You've been on one of these before?" asked Lupin. "I've read about them in Muggle Studies. They never struck me as all that reliable."

"You don't have anything to worry about," said Harry.

"Hm," said Lupin. "You know, when I first read Lockheart's book, I was furious. The idea that he'd just waved his wand and done some sort of charm and it was cured painted us all like we must want to be like this. Like if we didn't want to be murderous monsters, we'd have popped on by and got ourselves cured.

"But now that I know what he said with you, I think I'm actually angrier. If he really did obliviate someone who'd figured out the cure, then that makes him personally responsible for everything that came after."

* * *

Lupin continued Harry's animagus training while we traveled. The airplane trip lost its novelty about an hour into the flight. I'd paid for all of the first class seats on our flight so we'd have the section of the plane for ourselves and thus could speak freely. As expected, the process was both complicated and time consuming, involving advanced transfiguration concepts that were technically NEWT level.

Harry responded well to focused, goal-oriented instruction. Just like with the polyjuice potion and the patronus charm, having a concrete objective helped Harry stay on task. Once he decided something was worth learning, Harry tended to pick things up quickly even if they were well beyond his grade level.

Harry and Lupin stayed in the hotel while Sloth, Loki, and I talked to people in Wagga Wagga. It wasn't hard to identify the wizard population living among the muggles of the city, though it looked as though Lockheart had been thorough in covering his tracks. I doubted there was a single witch or wizard in the city that wasn't under a memory charm. They all repeated the same story, verbatim, about Lockheart curing the werewolf. Even the former werewolf himself repeated it when we tracked him down.

"No one remembers the truth," said Sloth, plopping down on the hotel bed after another day of investigation. "I really thought we'd be able to get somewhere when we found the Armenian warlock, but he doesn't remember any more than the rest."

"Everything I've read about memory charms says breaking through them actually does more damage to the person than wiping their memory did," I said, exasperated as I plopped down beside her.

I took my time turner out from under my shirt and dangled it above my head. I stared wistfully at the enchanted hourglass and said, "I could go back to before Lockheart modified their memories, but that was years and years ago. And there's no convenient basilisk for my trip back."

Sloth sat up and asked, "What about a draught of living death? You could use that on yourself and we could give you the antidote just like the mandrake draught."

"I can't brew the draught of living death," I said, "and Lupin's mentioned he was never good with potions."

"So we'll buy a finished potion," said Sloth. "There must be someone in town who can brew it."

* * *

"This sounds incredibly risky," said Lupin when I'd explained the plan to him. "Past about five hours, time travel gets very dangerous. Besides which, you were given that to let you get to your classes on time and nothing else. The trouble you'd be in if the Ministry found out..."

"We're outside the British Ministry's jurisdiction," I said. "I've taken long trips before, and I think I know what makes them risky. Besides, this is important."

After selecting a landmark outside of town, I put the draught of living death in my bag and started rotating my time turner. While in the past, I had to tread with care, otherwise, the nearest paradox free arrival point might end up being in the mouth of an active volcano.

My experiments with the time turner really paid off, and I was deposited right outside the door of the man I'd come to speak to. I supposed history wanted me to get on with my business and then get back to my proper time. I wasn't going to argue.

It took some persuading to get the man to share the results of his research with me, but I knew he'd talked to Lockheart, so I just had to be patient, present myself as the fellow researcher I was, and he eventually gave in to temptation. The charm he'd designed was unique to this application, and it was far more complicated and impressive than Lockheart's account had indicted. The charm itself required the wizard's wand to be in contact with the werewolf, and timing was absolutely essential. His notes suggested that the charm could only work at the absolute darkest moment of a total lunar eclipse.

I took copious notes and repeated my assurances I had no intention of stealing credit for his research. I didn't say so, but I intended to hand him a copy of the notes I took as soon as I woke back up in the present. After making sure I'd found the right landmark, I stomped my foot and transmuted myself a tomb. I laid everything out, sealed myself in, and imbibed the draught of living death.

Sunlight was filtering into the tomb when I awoke with Sloth holding the antidote bottle to my lips. Harry and Lupin were watching anxiously. I shook off the dust and cobwebs that had gathered while I slept and got to my feet.

"I have the information!" I said, retrieving a thick notebook. "We need to drop off a copy with the inventor who's memory Lockheart erased. He deserves both to know about his own life's work, and to be properly acknowledge for his discovery."

* * *

We spent the remainder of our time in Australia seeing the sights while Harry continued with his animagus training. Finally, the day before we were to board our plane back to England, Lupin called Sloth and I in to see the results. Harry was grinning ear to ear as he stood in the middle of the room with his arms outstretched. In a motion almost too quick for the eye to see, Harry vanished, to be replaced by a raven with black features, the same color as Harry's hair, a thin fringe of white feathers where his famous lightning bolt scar would be on his human body, and green eyes.

Harry flapped his wings and flew a few laps around the room before landing back in the center and resuming human form.

"You did it!" said Sloth, hugging Harry.

"Congratulations!" I said, patting him on the back.

Harry had used my recording device throughout his lessons with Professor Lupin. That combined with the notes Harry took meant we could pass on the same training to the others once we were back at Hogwarts. Which was good. Everyone had mastered parseltongue, and we could sue something new to fill the gap.

Professor Lupin bid us farewell once we got off the plan back in England, and the rest of us returned to Privet Drive. We pulled in to our driveway just in time to see something fly out of an upstairs window of the Dursley house and shatter to pieces on the street below.

"I'll go and see," offered Harry, who turned into a bird and flew up to the open window to observe. A few minutes later, he fluttered back down, resumed human form, and fell over laughing.

"They put Dudley on a diet," explained Harry when he could breathe again. "His school sent him home with a note from the nurse. I saw it when I was there at the start of the summer. I didn't think the Dursleys could bring themselves to discipline Dudley, but it looks like that's what happened."

"They're throwing things at him?" I said, drawing my wand and turning toward the Dursleys' front door.

"No!" called Harry, stopping me. Dudley got so mad when they threatened to cut his pocket money if he kept hiding doughnuts that he threw his playstation out the window."

I'd learned a bit about computers in Muggle Studies, and still more doing my own research at the library on summer breaks. I swept up the chunks of damaged electronics and brought them inside. With the drapes safely drawn, I clapped my hands and repaired the video game console with alchemy. Testing my handiwork, I hooked it up to our television and launched the game that had been inside when it broke. Soon, the three of us were taking turns fighting each other in Dudley's game.

* * *

Author's comments:  
There wouldn't be much point to including time turners if they weren't going to be of any value at all. As we've established the devices only work on closed time loops, there are limitations on where they can be useful, but even a limited tool is incredibly valuable in the right situation.


	25. Chapter 34: The Quidditch World Cup

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 34) The Quidditch World Cup  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Some time later, Harry awoke in the middle of the night. Sloth and I were jolted awake ourselves by the beeping of the motion detectors in Harry's room. Due to the fact that the restless shade of Lord Voldemort kept trying to kill Harry, we'd installed one of the best muggle security systems money could buy. A bank of monitors showed every room in the house, and allowed us to verify at a glance that Harry'd set them off when he got out of bed, and that there were no intruders.

Harry was staring at the lightning bolt scar on his fore head in the bathroom mirror. Sloth and I got up and went upstairs to check on him.

"Is everything okay, Harry?" asked Sloth.

"My scar hurts," he said. "I had a dream about Wormtail and Voldemort. They'd killed someone and they were planning to kill me. I woke up and my scar was burning just like it did in first year when he was nearby."

Sloth and I glanced at one another, then I said, "You can tell us all the details once we're safely next door."

"Next door?" asked Harry.

"Behind the blood wards," I insisted. "That's half the reason we're living next door. If Voldemort's close, we don't have any time to lose."

We soundlessly slipped into the Dursleys' living room together. I manned the windows, watching next door to see if there was any sign of an intruder that our alarms and cameras had missed. Meanwhile, Sloth encouraged Harry to recount his dream as best he could recall it.

Harry was plainly embarrassed that we'd fled the house over him having a bad dream, but Sloth pointed out that Harry was plainly connected to Voldemort through that scar. He'd gained the power to speak parseltongue through it, and it had detected Voldemort's presence before. Even Dumbledore could only speculate on the nature of that connection, but its presence was undeniable. Maybe the dream was nothing, or maybe it contained an important clue.

So, Harry recounted. Voldemort and Peter Petigrew had been in an old house. They were talking about having killed someone. Petirew was apparently nursing Voldemort, involving regular feedings derived form milking a snake. Voldemort was plotting to kill Harry, while Petigrew suggested a different target. Voldemort had insisted it be Harry and cowed Petigrew. They mentioned their plan would have to wait until after the Quidditch World Cup, since the additional security would be a problem for them. They were about to speak about a third conspirator, when an old man dressed like a muggle was detected eavesdropping by Voldemort's snake. Harry woke up just as Voldemort turned around and couldn't recall what Voldemort looked like.

"Okay," said Sloth. "Hopefully that means he's miles away plotting. We'll stay here until daybreak just in case. The you should send Hedwig out with a letter to Dumbledore. He has more resources than we do to investigate this."

"I feel stupid writing Dumbledore every time I get a headache," complained Harry.

"He'd want you to," countered Sloth. "You remember how fast he found you when you moved in with us."

At that moment, Vernon Dursley came down the stairs and saw Harry, Sloth, Loki, Hedwig, and I gathered in his living room. His face turned purple with fury and a vein was visible throbbing at his temple.

"What are you doing back here?!" shouted Vernon. Dudley and Petunia came down the stairs to see what the shouting was about.

"You agreed to this," Sloth pointed out. "We take Harry in and in return, he stays here one night a year, plus we can retreat here if there's danger."

Vernon's mustache bristled as his temper rose higher. "I won't be lectured about my own agreement by a child!"

Loki positioned himself protectively between Vernon and Sloth and growled low. Blue light poured from beneath the dog's fur as his body grew. Green scales armored his thickly muscled form. Claws sharp enough to gouge stone dug into the Dursleys' floor, and his club like, reptilian tail swung in anticipation, smashing a coffee table. I placed a hand on his golden mane when his transformation completed.

"You should really watch your tone," I told Vernon evenly. "You and I know you're all bluster, but Loki here just sees someone yelling at his girl and he gets protective. You know how dogs are."

My touch kept Loki from crushing Vernon's skull with his powerful jaws, but the chimera's eyes never stopped tracking Vernon. Loki's tail continued to slowly drift from side to side so he'd be ready to pounce should the need arise.

"What's happened?" asked Petunia, far more politely.

"I think it was a false alarm," said Harry, his gaze shifting between the morning sunlight pouring through the window and the small glass top, his pocket sneakoscope, sitting quiet and still in his hand.

"We'll be back if there's more trouble," said Sloth over her shoulder as our party headed back next door.

Hedwig departed that afternoon, carrying letters to Dumbledore and Sirius. Harry'd been corresponding regularly with Sirius all summer, keeping him up to date about his life and wishing his godfather well. I'd sent Sirius one of my patronus pins with the first letter for some extra protection from the dementors who were still hunting him.

* * *

The Weasleys arrived to pick us up for the Quidditch World Cup the next day. Sloth and I adopted the appearance of fourteen year olds we planned to use at Hogwarts that year a few hours before they came. Shockingly, Arthur Weasley arrived by floo powder, despite me previously confirming that the fireplace at this house wasn't connected to the floo network. It turned out a friend of his at the Ministry of Magic's Department of Magical Transportation arranged to have our house temporarily hooked up to the floo network just for this trip.

"I was hoping I'd be able to meet your father before I left," said Arthur Weasley, looking around while Ron, Fred, and George helped get our trunks to the fireplace. "Minister Fudge mentioned running into him last year."

I couldn't tell him the three of us were living here on our own and that I'd been the one to talk to the Minister in my adult form. I shot a pleading look toward Sloth and Harry while I tried to come up with a story.

"Well,... you see,... he wanted to be here,... but something came up at work," I said vaguely. While I squirmed, Harry, Sloth, and Ron quickly consulted with Fred and George.

"Oh, I see," said Arthur, giving no sign he'd noticed my hesitation. "What is it he does? Do you live alone with him, or is there-"

Mr. Weasley's attention was drawn suddenly by a loud gagging noise. Sloth was holding her throat, and something that looked remarkably like a large tongue was sticking out of her mouth. I could see a wrapper of some sort clutched between her fingers.

"Not to worry!" exclaimed Mr. Weasley, rushing to Sloth's side. "I can sort this out!" He pulled out his wand and spoke an incantation as Sloth's tongue began to shrink back down to its previous size. Once Sloth was sorted out, he rounded on the twins. "That wasn't funny!"

"Actually, it kinda was," said Sloth, laughing now that she was no longer choking. "Don't be mad. I asked them what they'd been doing all summer, and they gave me that candy. What was that?"

"Ton Tongue Toffee," said Fred brightly. "George and I invented them, and we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer."

"Well, there seems to be no harm done," said Arthur, calming down. "Don't let your mother catch you with those. You know how she feels about this Weasleys Wizard Wheezzes stuff."

"Your formula needs a little more work," said Sloth. "At least if you want a bit of harmless fun instead of someone choking to death."

"We tested them out on ourselves first," said George. "Didn't notice the initial swelling as being that bad. Shouldn't be too hard to tweak now that we know the problem."

"Enough of that," said Arthur, tossing a pinch of floo powder in the fire. "We need to get moving."

One trip through the floo network later, and we arrived in the Weasley kitchen. The older Weasley siblings, Bill and Charlie, whom I hadn't met but had heard plenty about, were seated at the kitchen table. They offered friendly greetings before Hermione, Ginny, and Neville came in. We got straight to taking our trunks upstairs. I wold be sleeping in Ron's room with him, Harry, Neville, and the twins. Hammocks had been strung up to make use of the cramped space.

nce we were safely away from adult ears, Fred put a hand around my shoulder and asked, "So, do you mind telling me why I had to cause that distraction back there?"

"We were lucky dad didn't say anything to mum about it," added George, putting his arm around me from the other side.

"It'd be bad for Harry if anyone else finds out," I said. "Not great for me and Sloth, but really bad for Harry."

"Your secret's safe with us," said Fred.

"Or it will be once we know what it is," added George.

I nodded. "Neither Sloth, nor I have any parents. We've been living on our own together since coming to England. Before that, even. The Minister of Magic never met my father. He met me in disguise when I went to reverse some accidental magic on one of Harry's relatives."

"You Ravenclaws are smart," said Fred, amused. "I can't believe we never thought of faking our ages to sort out those Ministry notices."

"Wouldn't have worked," said George. "They know what dad looks like. And polyjuice would be a bit far to go to sort those out. Greed didn't need any more than an ageing potion."

"You won't say anything, will you?" asked Sloth.

"And have Harry go back to those muggles? Fat chance of that," said George.

Ratcatcher, the winged serpent Ron had made at the end of last year was sunning himself in the window sill. The cauldron Ron had been using in his Daily Prophet photo was sitting in a corner filled with gold coins. A notebook in with his schoolbooks had some text encoded with an alchemic cypher visible. He'd done some reviewing over the summer.

We learned that Percy had entered the Ministry of Magic and was very impressed by his boss, Barty Crouch, the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Fred and George, unsurprisingly, had no interest in following in Percy's footsteps. Instead, they wanted to open a joke shop. Mrs. Weasley didn't approve. She was also upset with them for their poor performance on the OWLs.

Once the twins left, the conversation shifted over to parseltongue, and Harry filled the others in on Sirius' correspondences, and explained about our trip to Australia with Lupin. Hermione was torn about me using my time turner to retrieve a potential cure for lycanthropy. Her opinion on Harry learning to be an animagus was less conflicted.

"That's really advanced transfiguration, isn't it?" said Hermione. "I wish I'd been able to learn it."

Harry took out his notes and the recorder, saying, "We thought you'd say that. All the instructions are in here. We're done with parseltongue and occlumency after all."

"Have you registered with the Ministry yet?" asked Hermione.

"Why would Harry want to do that?" asked Ron. "Sirius only got out of Azkaban and managed to go into hiding because he wasn't registered."

"It's the law,Ron," said Hermione. "If Harry gets caught, it won't be a detention. They'll send him to Azkaban."

"Tom's going to come after Harry again sooner or later," said Neville quietly. "When he does, Harry could do with having a trick no one knows about to fall back on."

"If that dream means anything, he might need that trick sooner rather than later," I said, considering.

"You're not going to tell anyone, are you, Hermione?" asked Harry.

"Of course not," she replied quickly. "I still think you should want to register."

"If you hide it, that does mean you can't use it nearly as often," noted Ginny. "No turning into a bird for a quick flight around the castle to clear your head."

"And it does grate, not being able to use your powers casually," said Sloth. "I can't count the number of times I've had to deliberately let myself get bumped into in the hall between classes."

"That's a good point," said Harry, "but I think I'm still with Ron and Neville on this one."

"Well, I'm going to register," said Hermione.

"Won't that make it pretty obvious the rest of us are too?" asked Ron.

"No," said Harry. "Hermione's way smarter than us and everyone knows it. Once she registers, everyone'll assume we would have registered too if we could do it."

That settled, we went downstairs to see if Mrs. Weasley needed any help getting dinner ready. She quickly set us to work setting the tables out in the garden, which went quickly once Bill and Charlie stopped hovering the and smashing them into one another.

At dinner, Percy talked everyone's ear off about his work with the Ministry. Apparently, everyone was putting in overtime arranging the World Cup. I glanced meaningfully at the others when he mentioned a member of the Department of Magical Games and Sports going missing on holiday in Albania. Dumbledore had mentioned sources indicating that was where Voldemort's shade was hiding. The Ministry was also organizing another event after the World Cup, but apparently Percy couldn't talk about it except to repeatedly remind us that he knew but couldn't talk about it.

I sent Loki to sleep with Sloth in Ginny's room that night to help with the crowding situation in Ron's room. It was collectively agreed that Neville was to sleep at ground level so we could avoid trouble with him trying to climb in or out of a hammock.

* * *

The next morning was surprisingly less hectic than I was expecting. Everyone was roused before sunrise, though Charlie, Bill and Percy were left to sleep in. Apparently, the three of them would be joining us by apparition later in the day. Mrs. Weasley, who wasn't planning to attend the game, offered to keep an eye on all the pets while we were away.

Mr. Weasley had us all change into muggle clothes, since the World Cup was technically happening in a moor that wasn't magically concealed like Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley were. Once we were appropriately attired, he led us in a long hike that left the humans winded and sweating. Sloth and I faked fatigue for the benefit of the twins and Mr. Weasley, who didn't know we weren't human.

Mr. Weasley explained as we went that we would be traveling by portkey. Portkeys were apparently random objects, usually bits of litter to make them inconspicuous, that had been enchanted to magically transport as many people as could touch it at once to a predetermined location. The Ministry of Magic had prepared a large number of portkeys to get people from all across magical Britain to the site of the World Cup.

On arrival, Mr. Weasley started to get us spread out and searching for the portkey when a voice called out, "Over here, Arthur! Over here, son! We've got it!"

We approached the figures, and Mr. Weasley greeted the man who'd called. "Amos! This is Amos Diggory, everyone. He works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son Cedric."

"He's the Hufflepuff seeker," said Sloth, greeting the seventh year happily.

"Long walk, Arthur?" asked Amos.

"Not too bad," said Arthur. "We live just in the village there. You?"

"Had to get up at two, didn't we, Ced?" replied Amos. "I tell you, I'll be glad when he's got his apparition test. Still, not complaining. Quidditch World Cup. Wouldn't miss it for a sack full of galleons, and the tickets cost about that. Mind you, it looks like your lucky you've got an alchemist for a son. Those all yours?"

"Oh, no. Only the redheads," explained Mr. Weasley, who proceeded to introduce the rest of us.

"Merlin's beard," exclaimed Mr. Diggory. "Harry? Harry Potter?"

"Er, yeah," said Harry, uncomfortably.

"Ced's talked about laying against you last year. I said to him, I said, 'Ced, that'll be something to tell your grandchildren, that will. You beat Harry Potter.'"

"Harry fell off his broom, dad," said Cedric, looking almost as uncomfortable as Harry was. "I told you. It was an accident."

"Yes, but you didn't fall off, did you?" insisted Mr. Diggory, giving his son a pat on the back.

"It wasn't an accident," I said darkly. "Harry was attacked and nearly killed by dementors."

"Mr. Diggory," interjected Sloth, "did your department get our house elf petition?"

"Indeed we did," said Amos genially accepting the change of subject. "If things at the Ministry weren't so all hands on deck, I imagine I'd hear about little else at the office. We usually don't get much attention in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Then we get your petition with enough gold on offer to fund six full time house elf investigators. Expensive and time consuming work, you know, on account of the fact that abusive owners can just order them not to talk. Looked like the biggest windfall our department would ever see. Then, very next day, the Minister comes in with a counter offer from Lucius Malfoy. Double the additional funding, and no strings attached on how we use it."

"He's trying to outbid me?" declared Ron incredulously. "We can match any counteroffer Lucius Malfoy wants to make. We'll offer every knut of funding he offered you in addition to the six fully funded house elf investigators, and if you get another counteroffer, send me an owl and I'll match that too."

"We're a minute off," said Mr. Weasley. "We'd better get ready. You just need to touch the portkey, that's all. A finger will do."

We crowded around, jostling one another, until we were all touching the old boot that Mr. Diggory was holding. Mr. Weasley stared at his watch and provided a countdown. Then, a sensation of being pulled forward suddenly by my guts came, accompanied by a rush of wind and color. Any fear I had of losing contact with the portkey midfight was assuaged by the fact that my fingertip felt as though it were glued to the boot. Then, a moment later, just long enough to process the motion, our party was dumped on the ground in an unfamiliar location, and a wizard called out, "Seven past five from Stoatshead Hill."

As our party got to our feet, Arthur Weasley chatted with the wizards. They explained where to find our campsite, and sent the Diggories off toward theirs. The manager of our campsite was named Mr. Roberts. On arriving, Mr. Weasley turned to Harry for help with the muggle money.

"You foreign?" asked Mr. Roberts.

"Foreign?" asked Mr. Weasley.

"You're not the first one who's had trouble with money," Roberts added. "I had two try and pay me with great gold coins the size of hubcaps ten minutes ago."

"Did you really?" said Mr. Weasley, twisting his hands together.

"Never been this crowded," said Roberts. "Hundreds of pre-bookings. People usually just turn up."

"Is that right?" said Mr. Weasley.

"Aye," said Roberts, suspiciously. "People from all over. Loads of foreigners. And not just foreigners. Weirdos, you know? There's a bloke walking around in a kilt and a poncho."

"Shouldn't he?" asked Arthur, growing more nervous.

"It's like some sort of, I don't know, like some sort of rally," continued Roberts. "They all seem to know each other, like a big party."

Without warning, a wizard appeared out of thin air and barked, "Obliviate!" with his wand pointed at Roberts. Harry and Ron gripped my shoulders, while Hermione and Neville did hte same to Sloth. The two of us allowed ourselves to be restrained.

Roberts handed Mr. Weasley his change. The wizard walked with us away from Roberts, and when we were out of earshot said, "Been having a lot of trouble with him. Needs a memory charm ten times a day to keep him happy. And Ludo Bagman's not helping. Trotting around talking about bludgers and quaffles at the top of his voice, not a worry about anti-muggle security. Blimey, I'll be glad when this is over. See you later, Arthur." Then the wizard disapparated with a pop.

"Why don't they just tell Roberts what's going on and ask him to keep it secret?" I asked, drawing on my occlumency training to keep the anger out of my voice.

"That would make things simpler on the oblivators," said Mr. Weasley, "but monitoring him to make sure he kept that promise would be a job."

"It's just hard to take," I said. "He's getting his mind wiped over and over again because he's smart enough to notice something's strange."

"Well, he wouldn't need to be that smart," said Harry dryly as we crested a hill and got a look at the campsite. The tents the wizards had laid out were plainly impossible without magic. The least suspicious ones had chimneys. On the other end of the spectrum was a three story monstrosity with turrets.

"Always the same," said Arthur Weasley, smiling and shaking his head. "We can't resist showing off when we get together. Ah, here we are. Look, this is us. Couldn't have a better spot. The field is just on the other side of the wood, there. We're as close as we could be."

Mr. Weasley pulled a disassembled tent out of his backpack and said, "Right. No magic allowed, strictly speaking. Not when we're out in these numbers on muggle land. We'll be putting these tents up by hand. Shouldn't be too difficult. Muggles do it all the time. Here, Harry. Where do you reckon we should start?"

As it turned out, I had the most camping experience among our party, and ended up directing the erection of the pair of tents Mr. Weasley had brought. While we worked, I talked with Mr. Weasley about memory charms. He explained there were rules about what you could and couldn't erase. His recently passed muggle protection act ensured that you couldn't obliviate away enough of their memory to leave them a different person, or cover up crimes using memory charms. In fact, the only legal use of memory charms on muggles was to conceal the existence of magic from them. I still wasn't particularly happy about it, but I was sufficiently placated to avoid letting it ruin my trip.

My mind off memory charms, I noticed that we were somehow supposed to fit over a dozen people into two small tents without magic. It turned out there was a bit of a cheat in that regard. The inside of the tents were bigger than the outside. Each tent contained a three room apartment with a bathroom and kitchen. The bedrooms contained four sets of bunk beds. It would be mildly cramped, but not literally stacked to the top like firewood that it would have been without the undetectable extension charms.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were sent off to fetch water while the rest of us gathered firewood from the nearby forest. Despite the thousands of campers from hundreds of countries, the easy to collect deadwood wasn't picked clean. Apparently, the rest of them were less inclined to inconvenience themselves for the sake of the international statute of secrecy. Once we retrieved the wood, I helped Mr. Weasley get the camp fire going.

While we sat around the fire, Mr. Weasley pointed out the Ministry witches and wizards who were passing by. A man who Arthur identified as an unspeakable did a double take after glancing at our party. For comfort, I'd reverted to my standard homunculus outfit with the black half-vest that showed off the oroboros mark in the center of my chest. The unspeakable was staring right at my mark. It took me a long moment before I recognized him as one of the men I'd gotten into a fight with shortly after arriving in this world.

His eyes flitted between me and Sloth, narrowing as he convinced himself we were the same people he discovered in the deepest, most top secret level of the Ministry of Magic. I moved to stand, but just as suddenly, he turned and hurried away.

"What was that about?" asked Fred.

"No idea," said Arthur.

"Explain later?" hissed Neville quickly in parseltongue, concealing the sound amid the crackling of the fire. I nodded imperceptibly in response.

Harry and the others arrived back, and Bill, Charlie, and Percy apparated in to join us. Sausage and eggs had been cooked up over the fire. As we ate, a wizard in yellow and black Quidditch robes wandered near our camp, and Arthur Weasley greeted him.

"Aha! The man of the moment! Ludo!"

"Ahoy there!" called Ludo in response. "Arthur, old boy, what a day, eh? What a day! Could we have asked for more perfect weather? A cloudless night coming, and hardly a hiccup in the arrangements! Not much for me to do!"

Percy extended a hand in greeting. Arthur introduced us all, then said, "Everyone, this is Ludo Bagman. You know who he is. It's thanks to him we've got such good tickets."

Bagman smiled and waved off Arthur's gratitude, and said, "Fancy a flitter on the match, Arthur? I've already got Roddy Pontner betting me Bulgaria will score first. I offered him nice odds, considering Ireland's front three are the strongest I've seen in years. And little Agatha Timms has put up half shares in her eel farm on a week long match."

"Oh, go on, then," said Mr. Weasley. "Let's see, a galleon on Ireland to win?"

"A galleon?" asked Bagman, unsure he'd heard right. Ron's alchemy training had improved the family's financial situation, but the habits of their previous poverty died hard. Bagman shrugged. "Very well. Very well. Any other takers?"

"They're a bit young to be gambling," said Arthur. "A bit pointless in "Ron's case. And besides, Molly wouldn't like-"

"We'll bet thirty seven galleons, fifteen sickles, three knuts that Ireland wins, but Viktor Krum gets the snitch. Oh, and we'll throw in a fake wand."

"You don't want to go showing Mr. Bagman rubbish like that-" started Percy.

"Excellent," interrupted Bagman. "I haven't seen one that convincing in years! I'd pay five galleons for it!" He jovially waved around the rubber chicken the wand had turned into.

"Boys," said Arthur, "I don't want you betting. That's all your savings. Your mother-"

"Don't be a spoilsport!" declared Bagman as he rushed to take down the bet. "They're old enough to know what they want! You reckon Ireland will win but Krum'll get the snitch. Not a chance, boys. Not a chance. I'll give you excellent odds on that one. We'll add five galleons for the funny wand, then, shall we."

"They probably expect me to reimburse them if they lose," noted Ron.

"You've got it backward, baby brother," said Fred cheerfully. "We're on our way to making our own fortune."

"We can't just coast by on the family money forever," added George.

Bagman turned back to Mr. Weasley and asked, "Couldn't do me a brew, I suppose? I'm keeping an eye out for Barty Crouch. My Bulgarian opposite number's making difficulties, and I can't understand a word he's saying. Barty'll be able to sort it out. He speaks about a hundred and fifty languages."

"Mr. Crouch?" said Percy. "He speaks over two hundred. Mermish, and Gobblegook, and Troll-"

"Anyone can speak troll," said Fred. "All you have to do is pint and grunt."

"Probably parseltongue too," hissed Harry quietly.

"Any news of Bertha Jorkins yet, Ludo?" asked Arthur while Percy put some water on to boil.

"Not a dicky bird," said Bagman unconcernedly, "but she'll turn up. Poor old Bertha, memory like a leaky cauldron and no sense of direction. Lost, you take my word for it. She'll wander back into the office sometime in October thinking it's still July."

"You don't think it might be time to send someone to look for her?" asked Arthur.

Bagman accepted his tea from Percy and said, "Barty Crouch keeps saying that, but we really can't spare anyone at the moment. Oh, talk of the devil! Barty! Pull up a bit of grass, Barty."

Barty Crouch had short grey hair and a mustache that must take considerable effort to trim as straight as it was. He wore a tailored business suit with shined black shoes. While most of the wizards here displayed only a passing familiarity with muggle dress, this outfit was right out of my muggle studies textbook. And still absolutely wrong, since no one dresses like that for camping.

"No thank you, Ludo," said Crouch stiffly. "I've been looking for you everywhere. The Bulgarians are insisting we add another twelve seats to the top box."

"Oh, is that what they're after?" asked Bagman. "I thought the chap was asking to borrow a pair of tweezers. Bit of a strong accent."

"Mr. Crouch, would you like a cup of tea?" offered Percy.

"Oh, yes, thank you Weatherby," said Mr. Crouch.

"Weasley," I said.

"What?" asked Crouch. Percy stared horrified that I'd corrected his boss.

"Percy's name," I said, pressing on. "It's Weasley, not Weatherby."

"Really?" asked Crouch, looking to Percy for confirmation.

"It's fine," said Percy placatingly. "With everything else you have to do, it really isn't important."

"Oh, that reminds me, I've been wanting a word with you too, Arthur," said Crouch. "Ali Bashir's on the warpath. He wants a word with you about your embargo on flying carpets."

Arthur Weasley and Barty Crouch discussed the flying carpet embargo for a while. Eventually, Ludo Bagman entered the conversation and attempted to change the subject to the event being planned at Hogwarts this year. Crouch prevented any actual information from being revealed and dragged Bagman off to sort things out with the Bulgarians.

* * *

As the day wore on, the displays of magic from the gathered wizards grew more and more obvious. Souvenir vendors apparated in and out of clusters of people. Most of what was on offer were cheep novelty items, but Harry managed ot zero in on a vendor selling pairs of brass binoculars covered in dials, knobs, and controls. They were called Omnioculars, and not only allowed you to zoom in and out, but offered record, playback, slow motion, and even play-by-play breakdowns of the action. Each member of our party went to the stadium with a pair around our necks.

The stadium was massive. With seating for a hundred thousand, I doubted it was actually made of gold, but it was a convincing illusion. Deep purple carpeting was laid out on the floors. Our tickets were for the top box, right at the stadium's center line. In the box, we had a terrific view, and individual gold chairs with purple upholstery. When we arrived, the only person present was a house elf.

"Dobby?" asked Harry.

The elf turned and moved its hands away from its face, revealing that it wasn't the Malfoys' former house elf. "Did sir just call me Dobby?" it asked in a high voice that we'd verified last year was an indication of gender. This one was female while Dobby had been male.

"Sorry," said Harry. "I just thought you were someone I knew."

"But I knows Dobby too, sir!" she said excitedly. "My name is Winky, sir. And you sir, you is surely Harry Potter!"

"Yeah, I am," said Harry.

"But Dobby talks about you all the time, sir!" said Winky.

"So, do you work at Hogwarts with him?" he asked.

Winky shook her head so her ears flapped and said, "Dobby is seeing Winky, sir... He is visiting on his..." she lowered her voice scandalously, "days off, sir."

"Good," said Harry. "I'm glad he's getting out and having some fun on his time off."

"House elves is not supposed to have fun, Harry Potter," said Winky. "House elves does what they is told. I is not liking heights at all, Harry Potter, but my master sends me to the top box and I comes, sir."

"Why's he sent you up here if he knows you don't like heights?" asked Harry.

"Master," began Winky, "master wants me to save him a seat, Harry Potter. He is very busy. Winky is wishing she is back in master's tent, Harry Potter, but Winky does what she is told. Winky is a good house elf."

She hid her face in her hands once more so she wouldn't have to look out over the ledge. I took a scrap of parchment from my pocket and set it on the floor in front of Winky, then turned it into a short, opaque screen to keep her from seeing the edge if she peeked.

"That's a willful violation on the restriction on underage wizardry!" blustered Percy. "Just because there's so much magic going on the trace won't know it was you doesn't give you free license to break the rules!"

"You could've done it," I shot back. The truth was, I'd forgotten all about that rule, but it wouldn't do any good admitting it. Nor would it help anything to explain my powers didn't set off the trace normally. "She's terrified. You expect me to ignore that when I can help?"

"That's not the point," said Percy imperiously. "Important members of the Ministry will be up here, and if you pull something like that in front of them, you'll be in real trouble! You'll be lucky if all you get is expelled and your wand snapped!"

"Don't worry Percy," said Fred. "We can give him one of our old warning letters when we get home."

"I'm sure we've got them in a box somewhere," added George.

"That was a kind thing to do," said Arthur, mediating, "but Percy's right. Underage magic is underage magic. Next time, just ask one of us to do it, okay?"

I nodded.

"A display from the team mascots will precede the match," read Hermione loudly from her program to change the subject.

"Oh, that's always worth watching," said Arthur, happily, his mind now back on the festivities. "National teams bring creatures from their native land, you know, to put on a bit of a show."

Over the next half hour, people filled the box. Minister Fudge introduced the Bulgarian Minister and his entourage. Lucius Malfoy, his wife Narcissa, and their son Draco were also in the box with us. There was some posturing, but it was cut short with the arrival of Ludo Bagman. After checking in quickly with Fudge, Bagman pointed his wand at his throat, cast, "Sonorus!" and welcomed everyone to the world cup in a voice that thundered across the stadium.

The first event was the performance by the Bulgarian team mascots. They were blond, pale skinned women which Mr. Weasley identified as Veela. Their flawless features gave them an unnatural look, though obviously, I had no room to talk. The veela began to dance, and I instantly felt a mental intrusion. Observing the layer of my mind that was being effected, isolated from the rest through occlumency, I was able to determine the intent. The veela were magically enhancing their attractiveness. I was amused to note that their spell wouldn't have effected me anyway. They weren't my type.

Looking around, those of us who'd studied occlumency with Snape last year were the only ones in the top box unaffected. The males were staring wide-eyed, and often with their jaws hanging slack, while the females had their eyes narrowed in irritation. Well, Winky still had her face covered, so it was questionable if she'd even noticed the veela one way or the other. Narcissa and Lucius were restraining Draco who seemed inclined to jump out of his chair.

Once the veela took their seats, over the protests of the crowd who wanted more, Ireland's mascots appeared. Thousands of leprechauns did some formation flying, carrying colored lamps that made them look like a living fireworks display. As they flew by, they rained gold coins down on the crowd.

Finally, it was time for the game. I put my omniocculars to my face, switched on the play-by-play option, and watched the players take to the field. The match was fast paced, but hilariously one sided. Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian seeker made his Irish counterpart look like an amateur, but Ireland's team of chasers was so fast and so well coordinated, it was all the Bulgarian beaters could do slowing them down as they racked up goals.

Fouls started coming in for Bulgaria as they desperately tried to stay in the game by any means necessary. At one point, the veela mascots attempted to work their charms on the referee, but he was brought to his senses by a swift kick in the shins.

Ireland's leprechauns formed taunting words and pictures in the sky that eventually managed to provoke the veela to violence. They conjured handfulls of fire and started hurling them at the leprechauns. Their appearance shifted dramatically, each veela growing a sharp beak and scaly wings.

Wizards tried to intercede in the battle between the mascots as the game continued overhead. Viktor Krum took a bludger to the face, breaking his nose, just before his Irish counterpart went into a hard dive in pursuit of the game ending golden snitch. Even injured, Krum was the better flyer. He gained on the Irish seeker, grabbed the snitch, and pulled out of the dive that left his counterpart colliding with the ground. Ireland won 170:160, but Krum had go the Snitch. I glanced at Fred and George who'd just bet their life savings on precisely this outcome.

* * *

The celebrations went long into the night, and our arty was happily up discussing the match for hours. We passed around pairs of omniocculars, replaying bits of the match for one another to bolster our good natured arguments. At length, Ginny passed out from exhaustion at the table, and Mr. Weasley sent everyone off to bed.

I'd only just properly settled when the cheers and noises of celebration outside turned to screams of panic. I hopped up as Mr. Weasley quickly roused the others. It took a moment after exiting the tent before I identified what it was people were fleeing.

There was a cluster of wizards wearing masks and hoods. They marched as a unit with their wands pointed skyward. In the air above them, were four humanoid figures, difficult to make out int he darkness. Random wizards joined the marchers, and someone blasted a tent in their path with his wand, setting several nearby tents on fire in the process. Amid the flames, I recognized Mr. Roberts, the muggle campground manager. A woman and two children, presumably his family, were suspended up there with him. They were terrified.

The muggles were being contorted painfully by the wizards below. One of the children was sent spinning, and the woman was turned upside down so her dress would fall down and show off her underwear.

"Fuck underage magic restrictions," I said, seething with outrage. I took a step toward the crowd of wizards, stomping my foot hard. When it came down, I used the transmutation circle on the sole of my boot to cause the ground to swell up like a wave on water, which zoomed toward the sadistic crowd accompanied by blue sparks of alchemic light.

I could hear Mr. Weasley sending the other underage students off into the woods for protection as my wave of earth hit and knocked the crowd off their feet. Sloth's wand put up a blue disk of transmuted air to catch the Roberts family and prevent them from falling when the puppeteers below were no longer holding them up.

Bill, Charlie, Percy, and Arthur charged at the crowd as they got to their feet. Harry, Neville, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George had heeded Mr. Weasley's instructions and fled to the safety of the forest.

"I've got the muggles," declared Sloth. "Help the others!"

I held up my left hand and a transmutation circle drew itself on my wrist. I activated it, and a disk of blue alchemic light appeared in front of me to shield from the hexes, curses, and jinxes the crowd was hurling in my general direction as I charged in.

With each step, I transmuted the ground, causing stone arms to reach up and grab one of the hostile wizards, pinning his arms to his sides. A flurry of red stunning hexes launched from the Weasleys' wands, knocking some of the crowd unconscious. Enemy wizards revived their stunned companions, blasted away my stone hands, and still had enough numbers to throw attack spells. The Weasleys were no slouches, and put up shielding spells to block the hostile magic.

Sloth, meanwhile, was moving the Roberts family out of harm's way and down to the ground near her. No spells were getting through me or the Weasleys, so she was able to focus and bring them down safely.

Deciding that killing them would probably only escalate an already nasty situation, but determined that we needed to thin their numbers, I took aim with my wand and blasted one of the enemy wands to splinters with a simple deconstruction. That got their attention. The now unarmed wizard apparated away.

By the time the rest of the Ministry wizards arrived on the scene, Sloth had joined me in deconstructing wands, while the Weasleys were alternating between defending with shield charms and throwing stunning hexes, disarming spells, and full body binds at the enemy wizards.

The Ministry wizards decisively turned the tide. No longer outnumbering us, it was all the marchers could do to shield themselves, let alone revive their stunned colleges. Suddenly, the entire crowd decided discretion was the better part of valor and app apparated away simultaneously.

People were pointing at the sky. I looked up to see a skull with a snake emerging from its mouth, made of green points of light, hovering over the forest Harry and the others had fled into. Screams of terror were coming from every direction as people caught sight of the image in the sky.

"The Dark Mark," breathed Bill. "They haven't... You don't think..."

"All of you, stay here," demanded Arthur with a tone of authority. "I'm going to get the kids. I need everyone else to stay right here while I do. He strode out into the forest.

"The stunned ones'll turn out to be just a bunch of random drunks. All the actual masked Death Eaters apparated away," said Charlie.

"Those were Death Eaters?" I asked.

He nodded. "I'm pretty sure."

"What's that mark?" asked Sloth, pointing up.

"It's a sign the Death Eaters used to use," said Bill. "Back when You-Know-Who was active, they used to send it into the air whenever they killed someone."

We all fell silent contemplating who might have died and hoping our friends and family were safe.

"You won't be in trouble," said Percy after a long moment. "There are provisions in the restriction on underage magic to cover emergencies."

Sloth and I nodded our thanks. That would be a relief to know once we no longer had to worry about what may have happened in the forest. I considered my time turner, but the dark mark itself would mean saving anyone through time travel was likely to cause paradox. That was probably part of the reason they used it in the first place. Thoughts of bringing one of the Weasleys and having them cast the spell after we saved the victim were quashed upon learning that how to cast the specific spell to conjure the Dark Mark was successfully kept secret and known only to Death Eaters.

Fred and George emerged from the forest with Ginny and Neville in tow. They'd been separated from Harry, Ron, and Hermione in their escape from the crowd. It was another ten minutes before Arthur returned with the remaining members of our party, and explanations of what happened in the woods were provided.

No one had died. After getting separated from the others, Harry had noticed his wand was missing. They heard the incantation when the Dark Mark went up. Ministry wizards apparated in and cast stunning spells, which Harry, Ron, and Hermione avoided getting hit by ducking. They did end up stunning Winky, who turned out to be Barty Crouch's house elf. Winky was found with Harry's wand. Crouch sacked Winky on the spot for fleeing the tent during the riot. It had been generally agreed that whoever cast the Dark Mark used Harry's wand and dropped it when he apparated away.

* * *

We caught an early portkey and returned to the Burrow the next morning, much to Mrs. Weasley's relief. Once there, Harry took Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Sloth, and I upstairs to talk privately. Harry shared his suspicions that the Death Eater attack and the Dark Mark were related to his dream. Harry also related a prophecy he'd heard from Trelawney last year, that the Dark Lord's servant would return to him and that he would rise again, "greater and more terrible than ever before." Petigrew had escaped shortly after.

To get our minds off that worrying subject, I turned to Neville and said, "I still owe you an explanation about the unspeakable, don't I?"

"I did ask that, didn't I," said Neville, thinking back. It had obviously skipped his mind in the excitement.

"You guys know me and Sloth are from another world," I said. "We entered this world through a portal hidden away at the bottom of the Ministry of Magic. The unspeakables caught us there and thought we broke in. Dumbledore convinced them to let us go."

That distraction hadn't lasted nearly as long as I'd hoped. Fortunately, Ron came to the rescue, suggesting a game of Quidditch. We spent a good deal fo the remaining week before school on broomsticks. Bill, Charlie, Fred, and George happily joined in and helped distract us from our troubles, and offered some good flying tips.

Percy and Arthur were at the office almost constantly, trying to calm people down after the attack on the World Cup. The day we were to depart for Hogwarts, Mr. Weasley was called in by Amos Diggory to help sort out a problem. A paranoid ex-Auror (dark wizard catcher) named Mad-Eye Moody claimed to have heard an intruder. His dustbins had been animated and managed to ambush and drive off the intruder.

The message had been delivered by Amos Diggory's disembodied head, which was sticking out of the fireplace. Apparently it was possible to floo just your head for the purpose of communication. It seemed like an option that was probably more trouble than it was worth with how the floo network functioned. Still, it was a step up in the communication infrastructure from letters delivered by owls.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Some long standing tensions about the way the wizarding world does business are starting to come back to the surface for our interdimensional travelers.


	26. Chapter 35: The New Defense Professor

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 35) The New Defense Professor  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The journey on the Hogwarts Express was uneventful besides catching up with Luna, and Draco deciding to stop by to gloat that he'd been told by his father what this mysterious event happening at Hogwarts was. Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle took off when Ron's chimera asked if they were bothering him and offered to bite them if need be.

It was storming badly when we arrived, and everyone debarking the carriages ran to get out of the rain. As soon as we were inside, Peeves the poltergeist pelted us with water balloons. Once Professor McGonagall chased him off, I clapped my hands and touched the others, drying us off with alchemy.

"Seriously," said Ron once he was dry. "How do you do that with no circle?"

"That's what you'll be learning this year," I said with a proud smile before heading into the Great Hall and taking my seat with the other Ravenclaws.

There was a long delay as we collectively awaited the new first years making their way through the storm by boat. At length, they arrived, and I cheered and greeted the new Ravenclaws as the Sorting Hat sent them along to our table. The food appeared on our plates and the feast got underway. As we ate, I encouraged the new students to leave a note of thanks on their plates for the house elves if they enjoyed their meals. It had been Sloth's idea over the summer, which she'd shared with the Gryffindors in our parseltongue club.

When the plates had been cleared, Dumbledore rose to make an announcement. He'd gotten through the list of new items Filch had banned, and explained that the Quidditch season was canceled this year. He was just about to explain what event would be replacing it when a man entered.

He had dark grey hair and a heavily scarred face. The man walked with a limp, leaning on a heavy staff. One of his legs was missing and had been replaced with a clawed prosthetic. My own leg ached slightly in sympathy as I recalled my various experiences requiring automail, both before acquiring my homunculus body, and during my brief stay in a world where my alchemy based abilities didn't function. His eyes were different colors, one dark brown and the other electric blue. The blue eye turned and rolled independently.

Dumbledore shook the man's hand and offered him a seat at the staff table. "May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher? Professor Moody."

Now I understood where the nickname Mad-Eye came from. I applauded politely, but I was one of a very few who did. Moody, for his part, seemed more concerned with the risk that his food may be poisoned than with the greeting, taking a swig from a hip flask rather than risk his goblet.

Dumbledore spoke again. "As I was saying, we are to have the honor of hosting a very exciting event over the coming months, an event that has not been held for over a century. It is my very great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year."

"You're joking!" shouted Fred Weasley. Laughs from around the Great Hall sounded at Fred's cue.

"I am not joking, Mr. Weasley," said Dumbledore, "though now that you mention it, I did hear an excellent one over the summer about a troll, a hag, and a leprechaun who all go into a bar... Er... but maybe this is not the time... no... Where was I? Ah yes, the Triwizard Tournament. Well, some of you will not know what this tournament involves, so I hope those who do will forgive me for giving a short explanation, and allow their attention to wander freely.

"The Triwizard tournament was first established some seven hundred years ago as a friendly competition between the three largest European schools of wizardry: Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. A champion was selected to represent each school, and the three champions competed in three magical tasks. The schools took it in turns to host the tournament once every five years, and it was generally agreed to be a most excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities. Until, that is, the death toll mounted so high that the tournament was discontinued.

"There have been several attempts over the centuries to reinstate the tournament, none of which has been very successful. However, our own departments of international magical cooperation and magical games and sports have decided the time is ripe for another attempt. We have worked hard over the summer to ensure that this time no champion will find himself or herself in mortal danger.

"The heads of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving with their short-listed contenders in October, and the selection of the three champions will take place at Halloween. An impartial judge will decide which students are most worthy to compete for the Triwizard Cup, the glory of their school, and a thousand galleons personal prize money.

"Eager though I know all of you will be to bring the Triwizard Cup to Hogwarts, the heads of the participating schools along with the Ministry of Magic have agreed to impose an age restriction on contenders this year. Only students who are of age, that is to say seventeen years or older, will be allowed toput forward their names for consideration. This is a measure we feel is necessary given that the tournament tasks will still be difficult and dangerous, whatever precautions we take, and it is highly unlikely that students below sixth and seventh year will be able to cope with them. I will personally be ensuring that no underage student hoodwinks our impartial judge into making them Hogwarts champion. I therefor beg you not to waste your time submitting yourself if you are under seventeen.

"The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving in October and remaining with us for the greater part of this year. I know that you will all extend every courtesy to our foreign guests while they are with us, and will give your wholehearted support to the Hogwarts champion when he or she is selected. And now, it is late, and I know how important it is to you all to be alert and rested as you enter your lessons tomorrow morning. Bedtime! Chop, chop!"

* * *

It was good being back at Hogwarts, even if the door to the Ravenclaw common room remained a constant source of irritation. My schedule still required the use of the time turner, including having my Arithmancy and Divination classes overlapping on the first day. Other than being introduced ot blast ended skrewts in Care of Magical Creatures, things were relatively uneventful until I got to Divination.

This term, we were studying astrology. The problem was, astrology relied on knowing the state of the stars and planets at the time of your birth. I'd been born in a parallel universe, which wasn't in temporal sync with this one. Even if I assumed the dating systems were compatible between worlds (and Hohenheim's birth date on his chocolate frog card suggested they were) the temporal differential meant I'd be using a chart for someone born over a century ago.

Sloth had it even worse. Between having no idea if she should use the day the original Nina was born, the day she was transmuted, or even Lockheart's birthday due to having his soul, none of those dates would seem reasonable for who and what we were presenting ourselves to be. And our astrology charts had to be turned in next week.

At dinner, rumors were unavoidable saying that Mad-Eye Moody had got into a confrontation with Draco Malfoy over something involving Harry. I eventually managed to piece together that Draco had tried to curse Harry in the halls, and Moody had transfigured Draco into a ferret and bounced him off the floor until McGonagall stepped in and put Draco right. Given everything Draco had done and tried to do over the years, it was hard mustering much sympathy for him, especially right after trying to curse Harry.

After dinner, I met up with Sloth and headed out to the Quidditch field. Loki happily trotted along at our heels.

"No Quidditch this year means we need to do some scheduling with Ron for his alchemy lessons," I said. "I'd like to get the lab set up for him to study red water safely before we meet up next week for our fencing lessons."

"Shouldn't be too bad," said Sloth. "You based this lab on your old one from when you were human. We get some breath filters and some gloves and he should be fine down there."

I took Sloth's hand and she held Loki's collar with the other, and the three of us descended through the ground, and emerged through the ceiling of my secret underground laboratory. The first thing I noticed wrong was that it wasn't dark. Freestanding torch sconces had been set up, lit with bluebell flames that shed light, but not heat. The cause was quickly made obvious. Mad-Eye Moody was seated on our couch.

"I thought this bolt hole might belong to the two of you," said Moody.

"How did you get in here?" asked Sloth. It was a reasonable question. Wizards couldn't pass through solid matter, and there weren't any doors for precisely that reason.

"Blasted in through the ceiling and repaired it once I was inside," he replied casually.

"How'd you find this place?" I asked.

Moody pointed to his false eye and said, "I was doing an initial security sweep of the grounds and I saw this place under the Quidditch field. Seemed worth checking out."

"That eye can see through solid matter?" I asked. He nodded.

"Why did you think this place was ours?" asked Sloth.

Moody's eye rotated in its socket to face what normal vision would regard as a blank wall. In truth, it was the way to the bedroom Sloth and I made use of down here. "There are some photographs in there that feature the both of you pretty prominently. There was no guarantee that meant anything with all the potion ingredients stockpiled down here. There's enough boomslang skin and bicorn horn to make a year's supply of polyjuice."

I blushed, but not nearly as red as Sloth did. I asked, "What happens now?"

Moody got to his feet and shrugged. "Nothing. A couple teenagers slipping off away from adult supervision's been happening since we invented teenagers. And it's not like you're the first ones to come up with using potions to spice things up. I was only down here making sure there wasn't more to it than that."

He pointed his wand at a wall and blasted a tunnel back up to the surface before resealing the wall behind him. His torches and bluebell flames vanished a moment later, leaving us in the dark. I activated the array to light the room. I could see Sloth was still blushing furiously.

"Why couldn't he have broken through the ceiling of our garden instead?" muttered Sloth angrily.

"Then we'd have found him on the floor dying of red water poisoning," I said.

"Exactly," said Sloth.

"You don't mean that," I said gently. "That could've gone way worse."

"I know," she said, "but I don't have to like it. And there's not going to be a next time. I'm burning those pictures." A flame alchemy array drew itself on the back of her right hand as she stepped through the wall to the bedroom.

I sat down and petted Loki. "Besides how embarrassing that was," I said to my dog, "if he can see through matter, he could spy on Ron's alchemy lessons. This year's human transmutation, the one Voldemort was after. We can't risk anyone else learning that secret."

"It's done," said Sloth, stepping back through the well. "You don't think that eye can see through clothes too, do you?"

"Probably," I said. "Not to mention the walls of the showers and bathrooms. If he's had that thing long enough to have a nickname about it, there's no surprise he acted as blase as he did."

"Well, that's just great," huffed Sloth. "We can't be sure of a moment's privacy all year."

"And that also means I have to be more careful about using my time turner. Catching us alone down here was embarrassing. Using my time turner for anything but getting to class means Azkaban."

* * *

Paranoia seemed too mild a word to describe the feeling that magic eye inspired in me. I had occlumency training to protect my thoughts and memories, but the knowledge that I could be being watched anywhere, at any time, with no means of defending myself brought back old fears and feelings of vulnerability. I carefully followed all the school rules and meticulously maintained my human impression at all hours of the day and night.

A few days later, I had my first Defense Against the Dark Arts class with Mad-Eye Moody. After taking attendance, he launched into his prepared speech.

"I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling dark creatures. You've covered boggarts, red caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, kappsas, and werewolves. Is that right?"

"We also did vampires," noted another student.

Moody nodded. "But you're behind, very behind on dealing with curses. So, I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with dark curses.

"They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic,I'm supposed to teach you countercurses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it till then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves. He reckons you can cope, and I say the sooner you know what you're up against, the better. How are you supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen? A wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about to do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be allert and watchful. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" The last word was shouted so loud and so sudden everyone jumped.

"So," continued Moody smoothly, "do any of you know what curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

"The-the unforgivables," said Michael Corner hesitantly, though not because he wasn't sure of the answer.

Moody smiled and said, "Good, and do you know what they are?"

"Cruciatus... Imperius... Adava Kedavra," recited Michael.

"Very good," said Moody. "The use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban."

He retrieved a jar of spiders from his desk and demonstrated each curse. Cruciatus, the torture curse, which caused excruciating pain without leaving a mark. Because it didn't damage the body, there was no limit to how long the torture could go on. Imperius, the control curse, which enslaved the victim to the caster's will. It could be fought off, which would be a later lesson, but that wasn't a sure thing. The Adava Kedavra, the killing curse, which instantly killed its target. There was no known countercurse and it ignored shields. The only person to ever survive it had been Harry Potter. Riddle had thrown it around at us in second year. It was lucky it only hit us homunculi who could regenerate back to life.

* * *

Sloth and I ended up making several different astrology charts with the intent of seeing if any of the potential birthdates we had wold produce accurate results, as well as one we were certain wouldn't produce good results, but which we could actually hand in without worrying about our cover. Hagrid's blast ended skrewts were both more dangerous to normal humans than Norbert the dragon, and harder to keep alive than engorged flobberworms. They had a built in explosive propulsion system, venomous stingers, and they looked like they'd eventually grow exoskeletons. Unfortunately, other than the blood sucking parts on the females, I saw no obvious signs of a means of consuming nutrients. It was going to be a long year, since raising them was to be our class project.

It was a releif to head down to the Chamber of Secrets for our resumed fencing lessons with Headless Nick. If the Chamber had remained hidden all these centuries, it must have formidable protections against magical spying. Just to be sure though, I had the basilisk keep her head turned up toward the school proper. If Moody's eye did let him see in here, the basilisk's gaze should petrify him. After an hour of brushing up on our fencing after the summer break, when the others headed back up I kept Ron back.

"This is where we'll be doing your alchemy lessons this year," I said.

"How come?" asked Ron.

"Because what you're learning this year is incredibly dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands. It could be used to bring Voldemort back to life, and we can't risk anyone else watching. And Moody can look through walls."

"What's that got to do with-?" started Ron.

"I don't trust him," I said. "Nothing personal, but after what happened last year with Petigrew, I think I'm justified in being a little paranoid. Make sure all your notes are encrypted. Also, no parseltongue during the lessons."

"You think the basilisk isn't trustworthy?" asked Ron incredulously.

"I don't know if the basilisk has had occlumency lessons," I said.

"Doesn't that require eye contact?"

"Eye contact makes it easier. You can do legilimency without it."

"Okay, okay," said Ron. "I get it. Constant vigilance."

"All right. Since there's no Quidditch, we'll meet down here once a week. Everything you learn this year will be building toward how to achieve immortality using alchemy. The techniques you learn this year will be dangerous. I'll do what I can to prepare you and mitigate those risks, but ultimately, the risks to body, mind, and soul involved will dwarf anything the Triwizard Tournament will be able to throw at the champions.

"We'll start with the recipe for a highly toxic cocktail of reagents we call red water. It produces toxic gasses and any contact risks heavy metal poisoning. Once you have your safety equipment, you'll be learning how to refine red water into an alchemy amplifier called a red stone using the Tringam method."

* * *

Our divination homework generated mediocre scores. I could only hope that we'd soon move on from astrology. Defense, I was dreading. It was occlumency lessons all over again. I would have to sit there and let someone try and tamper with my mind. In preparation, I ordered my suits of armor to kill Moody tonight unless I specifically countermanded the order after Defense Against the Dark Arts. If I was still under mind control when I left, he'd have to know to order me to call off the attack. Hopefully.

Moody cast the Imperius curse on me, and I found myself relaxed and happily certain that I was in good hands. All of my thoughts were swept away, leaving my mind quiet for the first time since Moody had appeared in my lab.

Moody's voice entered my mind where my own thoughts had been, commanding, "Drop to the floor and bark like a seal."

I obeyed without question, my legs folding beneath me. Then another voice echoed inside my empty brain. It was Father Cornello. I was remembering the day the Elric brothers had deceived him into announcing his intention to whip up our religious fanaticism and turn us into his personal army, unquestioningly loyal and unafraid to die because we would falsely believe in his status as the sun god's prophet.

"Bark like a seal," repeated Moody's voice inside my head.

"No!" came my own voice, suddenly so forceful that it erupted from my lips. It was halfway between a bark and the word, but the syllables were unmistakable. Moody was thrilled I'd fought as hard as I did, giving me repeated tries until I could snap myself out of it from the first moment.

After the occlumency lessons, I'd been expecting a series of escalatingly difficult to throw off control spells, but apparently the Imperius curse was an all or nothing effect. Feeling much more secure, I called off the attack on Moody and reflected on how lucky I'd been to master it on the first day. My classmates hadn't done so well.

Nor had Sloth as I would learn later that day. She'd had a panic attack after Moody undid the curse on her and she had to go to the infirmary. I went to see her as soon as I heard, squeezing her hand as soon as Madam Pomfrey was convinced to let me in.

"I hate him," sobbed Sloth as I tried to comfort her. "I almost killed him. It was all I could do to stop myself lashing out."

"He's trying to help," I said soothingly. "It was your first try. You'll get better. And once you get this, no one will ever be able to do this to you again."

"It was just silly stuff he made me do. Cartwheels while counting backward from a thousand, but it was so much like being her again. Not being anything more than a tool."

"If you want to stop, it stops," I said firmly. "If he has a problem with it, he goes through me. But I believe you can do this, and I don't think you'll be able to really feel safe again until you do."

"I just wish we could practice this with someone I already know and trust."

"I'll tell you what," I said. "We'll do it like we did the occlumency lessons with Dumbledore. I'll come with you and stay in the room, ready to deconstruct him into a red paste if he does anything but try to help you learn to beat the curse."

"You aren't in my Defense class," she said.

"I'll turn into a bug and watch," I said. "With the time turner, I'll have an alibi."

"I- Thank you, Greed," she choked and threw her arms around me. I returned her embrace.

* * *

I watched as a tiny spider clinging to the bottom of Sloth's desk during her next Defense class. My presence and moral support helped Sloth work through her fears and feelings of helplessness, and gave her the confidence to take multiple tries. On the third try, she managed a glimmer of resistance, which soon snowballed into completely throwing off the curse with Moody's continuing instruction and encouragement.

I hopped onto Sloth's back as she left, eager to resume human form and congratulate her. Once we were in relatively privacy, I did just that, turning human, but still clinging to her from behind in an affectionate embrace.

"I knew you could do it!" I said happily.

"You were right," she said smiling and clearly proud of herself. "Maybe he's not so bad after all. That eye is still creepy, though."

* * *

Author's comments:  
With the number of buttons he ended up pushing, intentionally or otherwise, it's a bit surprising that they didn't need another new Defense Professor after the first couple weeks with this group.


	27. Chapter 36: The Goblet of Fire

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 36) The Goblet of Fire  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Harry was corresponding with Sirius by owl. After Harry's letter this last summer, Sirius had returned to the country out of concern. Apparently, he'd been seeing signs himself of Voldemort preparing to make a move. Harry was convinced it had been just a nightmare, but it was clear that was something he was telling himself because he was worried for Sirius and blaming himself for putting him in danger.

Despite continuing arguments about the organization name, Hermione and Sloth were continuing to work on their house elf rights campaign. As part of their regular visits to the kitchens (where they were swamped with gratitude over the thank you notes) they learned that Winky had been hired at Hogwarts. Apparently she wasn't really doing any work, much to the other elves' distaste, but she was instead drowning her sorrows in drink. It really tore her up inside to no longer be serving the Crouchs, as her family had done for generations.

To keep Harry from feeling abandoned by Ron during our alchemy lessons, he was pulled in to help on the house elf projects. Most recently, they were crafting a voluntary order for supporting house elf owners to issue. The idea was to set up a standing order not to harm themselves and to repeat any mistreatment they suffered. There were a lot of specifics to work out.

Meanwhile, classes were going smoothly. I was handling the workload without much difficulty despite it ramping up in anticipation of the OWLs next year. Luna showed me various Quibbler articles about conspiracies in the Ministry of Magic in explanation of how Mad-Eye Moody had gotten paranoid enough to need a magic eye that could see through the back of his head and why he only ever drank from his hip flask. It was a pretty convincing argument, except for teh question of how the Quibbler got away with publishing all the secrets of these conspiracies. Luna sensibly explained it was because no one takes the Quibbler seriously, so no one considers it a threat.

Finally, it was the day before Halloween. Our heads of house assembled us outside to greet the delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. I'd been enduring rumors about these other schools for weeks leading up to their arrival. I'd shocked my housemates by agreeing with the rumored policy of Durmstrang that they actually taught the dark arts. It struck me as a sensible thing to do, and I was keeping enough secrets that I couldn't be bothered to also hide my contempt for the idea that there was knowledge that was inherently evil. After all, learning the dark arts wasn't the same as practicing them.

I'd tried to bring my omniocculars to watch for the delegations, but Professor Flitwick had me put them back in my trunk. Our uniforms were all looked over and we were arranged in neat lines. Everyone wanted to make a good impression on our foreign visitors.

Beauxbatons arrived in a massive carriage the size of a large house pulled by a dozen winged horses the size of elephants. The students dressed in pale blue robes, and hte headmistress was a woman as large as Hagrid named Madame Maxime. Due to their late autumn arrival, and the light silk of the Beauxbatons uniform robes, the delegation quickly headed inside the castle to warm up.

Durmstrang arrived by boat. A massive ship that traveled underwater, emerging to the surface in a giant whirlpool. The Durmstrang students wore deep red robes under heavy fur cloaks. One of them was unmistakably Viktor Krum, the Bulgarian national quiditch team's seeker. After a brief discussion with the Durmstrang headmaster Karkaroff, Dumbledore sent them inside as well. Ron used a red stone to create a quill and parchment to get an autograph with, but Krum had already gone inside.

When we arrived in the Great Hall, the Beauxbatons students were already seated at the Ravenclaw table. A few of them were still shivering. I drew my wand and created some warm cloaks on the back of their chairs the same color as their uniforms. That earned me a nod of gratitude as I took my seat and welcomed them to Hogwarts.

The Durmstrang students eventually settled at the Slytherin table and took off their heavy cloaks. The two headmasters took a seat on either side of Dumbledore, who remained standing to make an announcement.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and most particularly guests. I have the great pleasure of welcoming you all to Hogwarts. I hope and trust that your stay here will be both comfortable and enjoyable. The tournament will be officially opened at the end of the feast. I now invite you all to eat, drink, and make yourselves at home!"

I put in an effort to socialize with the Beauxbatons students, suggesting local dishes to taste and trying some of the flavors from their home country that the house elves had prepared. By the time we'd reached desert, they all looked considerably less cold and miserable. I left my note of thanks and compliments to the house elves, and some of the Beauxbatons students followed suit.

With the food done, I looked back up to the head table to see that Ludo Bagman and Barty Crouch had joined the feast at some point. Once again, Dumbledore rose to speak.

"The moment has come. The Triwizard Tournament is about to start. I would like to say a few words of explanation before we bring in the casket, just to clarify the procedure we will be following this year. But first, let me introduce, for those who don't know them, Mr. Bartemius Crouch, head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, and Mr. Ludo Bagman, head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

"Mr. Bagman and Mr. Crouch have worked tirelessly over the last few months on the arrangements for the Triwizard Tournament, and they will be joining myself, Professor Karkaroff, and Madame Maxime on the panel that will judge the champions' efforts. The casket, then, if you please, Mr. Filch."

Filch brought forward a jewel encrusted wooden chest and set it on the table in front of Dumbledore, who continued to speak.

"The instructions for the tasks the champions will face this year have already been examined by Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman, and they have made the necessary arrangements for each challenge. There will be three tasks spaced throughout the school year, and they will test the champions in many different ways: their magical prowess, their daring, their powers of deduction, and of course, their ability to cope with danger.

"As you know, three champions compete in the tournament, one from each of the participating schools. They will be marked on how well they perform each of the tournament tasks and the champion with the highest total after task three will win the Triwizard Cup. The champions will be chosen by an impartial selector: the Goblet of Fire."

Opening the casket, Dumbledore produced a rough, wooden cup that must've dated back to the tournament's founding seven centuries ago. Filling the cup were a mass of blue white flames. He closed the chest and set the goblet on top before continuing.

"Anybody wishing to submit themselves as champion must write their name and school clearly upon a slip of parchment and drop it into the goblet. Aspiring champions have twenty four hours in which to put their names forward. Tomorrow night, Halloween, the goblet will return the names of the three it has judged most worthy to represent their schools. The goblet will be placed in the entrance hall tonight, where it will be freely accessible to all those wishing to compete.

"To ensure that no underage student yields to temptation, I will be drawing an age line around the Goblet of Fire once it has been placed in the entrance hall. Nobody under the age of seventeen will be able to cross this line.

"Finally, I wish to impress upon any of you wishing to compete that this tournament is not to be entered into lightly. Once a champion has been selected by the Goblet of Fire, he or she is obliged to see the tournament through to the end. The placing of your name in the goblet constitutes a binding magical contract. There can be no change of heart once you have become a champion. Please be very sure, therefor, that you are wholeheartedly prepared to play before you drop your name into the goblet. Now, I think it is time for bed. Good night to you all."

The Durmstrang and Beauxbatons parties returned to their respective transports for the night. Due to a holdup at the door caused by the Durmstrang headmaster Karkaroff recognizing Harry, I was able to briefly check in with Sloth, hissing in parseltongue for her to get her cloak and meet me in the entry hall tonight.

* * *

In Ravenclaw tower, I waited for the others to go to bed, then retrieved my invisibility cloak. Although, looking over it, the magic was clearly fading, I'd be mostly translucent in it, which was still better than without the cloak, but it would definitely need to be replaced. I supposed that was what I got for taking it time traveling with me.

Sloth was waiting for me in the entrance hall. The Goblet of Fire was seated on the Sorting Hat's stool in the center of a golden ring drawn on the floor.

"I'm here," she said when I took off my cloak. "What's this about?"

"The age line," I said pointing. "It can tell us what age this world's magic things we are. I figure that'll at least narrow down how many charts we need to make for our astrology homework in Divination."

"So, you want us to try putting our names in the Goblet of Fire," she said. "Isn't that risky? Dumbledore said it was a 'binding magical contract' whatever that means."

"It's a wizard tournament testing magical prowess," I said. "Neither one of us can do any magic at all."

"True," she said. "Okay, do you have some parchment?"

We each wrote our names and school on some parchment and stepped over the age line at the same time. A moment later, Sloth was burled back out and flew ten feet away before crashing to the ground. A popping noise accompanied the appearance of a long brown beard on her face.

"Looks like it thinks you're of age and I'm not," said Sloth. She held the beard up to examine it, then clapped her hands. The beard vanished amid blue sparks of alchemic light as she ran a hand across her face.

I dropped my parchment into the Goblet of Fire, and the blue flames turned briefly red. Then I stepped out of the circle. That did indeed narrow down the appropriate astrology chart. Before leaving, I mentioned the fading of my cloak and suggested that we might want to put new invisibility cloaks on the others' Christmas lists. Harry's had been inherited and was probably fading to visibility too.

* * *

The next day, Sloth and I joined Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville visiting Hagrid. Ginny and Luna were in their first term of Care of Magical Creatures with Hagrid, but outside classes, this was the first chance we'd had to visit with him. As usual, Loki and Fang got on beautifully.

Apparently, Hagrid had taken a fancy to Madame Maxime, and had donned the hideous suit and tie he'd worn to Buckbeak's trial. He'd also tried to do something with his hair, and failed rather spectacularly. Sloth, Ron, and I set to work fixing up his appearance, transmuting his hair and clothes in front of a mirror until Hagrid had precisely the look he wanted. The others offered suggestions and critiques regarding what looked good on him.

As usual, Sloth and I were the only ones who could stomach Hagrid's cooking. That didn't stop the others from staying for lunch too. We discussed the Triwizard Tournament. Hagrid had helped set up the trials and was barely able to keep himself from telling us what was coming in his excitement.

When the time came to return to the Great Hall for dinner, we wished Hagrid luck with Madame Maxime and headed out. Speculation abounded about who would be chosen as Hogwarts champions. Apparently, Fred and George had tried to bypass the age line with an ageing potion. It had the same result on them as it had on Sloth.

After we'd all eaten our fill at the Halloween feast, Dumbledore rose to speak again.

"Well, the goblet is almost ready to make its decision. I estimate it requires one more minute. Now, when the champions' names are called, I would ask them please to come up to the top of the hall, walk along the staff table, and go through into the next chamber where they will be receiving their first instructions."

Dumbledore extinguished the candles except those in the pumpkins laid out around the room so we could better see the flames in the goblet. Suddenly, the blue white flames flared red and a parchment was ejected. Dumbledore caught it and read.

"The champion for Durmstrang will be Viktor Krum."

Applause and congratulations sounded through the Hall. Viktor rose and walked along the path Dumbledore had indicated, vanishing into the next room. Then again, the flames of the goblet flared red, and Dumbledore read the next parchment.

"The champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour!"

A girl stood and made her walk up to the next room to further applause. Some of the Beauxbatons delegation burst into tears of disappointment. They must have really had their hopes up. The Goblet of Fire ejected a third parchment. He didn't look happy with what he read.

"The Hogwarts champion is Marcus Oren."

It took me a minute to realize what had happened. I was being thumped on the back and pushed to my feet by my housemates. I made my way to the head table. Once there, I turned to Dumbledore and said, "I didn't think that-"

"Through the door, Marcus," he sad, coolly.

Viktor and Fleur were waiting by the fire when I entered the waiting room. We stared awkwardly at one another for a long moment. Then Harry entered the room.

"Harry," I greeted him. "Did Dumbledore manage to sort out this mistake?"

"Er," said Harry awkwardly.

Before he could collect his thoughts, Ludo Bagman entered and pulled Harry forward saying, "Extraordinary! Absolutely extraordinary. Gentlemen, lady, may I introduce, incredible thought it may seem, the fourth Triwizard champion?"

"Fourth?" asked Fleur.

"Er," I said, "they called my name too."

"But evidently there has been a mistake. They cannot compete. They are too young."

"Well, it is amazing," said Bagman, "but as you know, the age restriction was only imposed this year as an extra safety measure, and their names came out of the goblet. I mean, I don't think there can be any ducking out at this stage. It's down in the rules, you're obliged. They will just have to do the best they-"

The remaining judges burst in, along with McGonagall, Snape, and Flitwick.

Fleur approached her headmistress, reporting, "Madame Maxime, they are saying that these little boys are to compete!"

"What is the meaning of this, Dumbledore?" demanded Maxime.

"I'd rather like to know that myself, Dumbledore," said Karkaroff. "Two Hogwarts champions? I don't remember anyone telling me the host school is allowed two champions. Or have I not read the rules carefully enough?"

"Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, Marcus?" asked Flitwick kindly.

"I did," I admitted, "but I didn't expect to get chosen. I just wanted to see if I could cross the age line. I mean, I'm a..." I almost said muggle. How could the Goblet of Fire pick me for a TriWIZARD tournament? But I didn't dare say that, so I finished, "... a fourth year."

"Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, Harry?" asked Dumbledore.

"No," said Harry. Snape snorted derisively.

"Did you ask an older student to put it into the Goblet of Fire for you?" asked Dumbledore.

"No!" repeated Harry even more firmly.

Maxime and Karkaroff were both furious, suggesting one fix after another to restore fairness to the tournament. Resubmitting names from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang to bring the total champions up to six was shot down. Both I and Harry offered to withdraw in favor of the other, but apparently "binding magical contract" meant we had no choice but to compete.

Mad-Eye Moody entered the room as Karkaroff was threatening to walk out of the tournament.

"Empty threat, Karkaroff," growled Moody. "You can't leave your champion now. He's got to compete. They've all got to compete. Binding magical contract like Dumbledore said. Convenient, eh?"

"Convenient? I'm afraid I don't understand you, Moody," said Karkaroff.

"Don't you?" said Moody. "It's very simple, Karkaroff. Someone put Potter's name in that goblet knowing he'd have to compete if it came out."

"And Marcus?" asked Flitwick.

"A distraction," said Moody. "Sorry, boy, but Potter's got enemies you don't."

"We all know Professor Moody considers the morning wasted if he hasn't discovered six plots to murder him before lunchtime," said Karkaroff dismissively. "Apparently he is now teaching hsi students to fear assassination too. An odd quality in a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dumbledore, but no doubt you had your reasons."

"Imagining things, am I?" said Moody. "Seeing things, eh? It was a skilled witch or wizard who put the boy's name in that goblet."

"And what evidence is there of that?" asked Maxime.

"Because they hoodwinked a very powerful magical object," said Moody. "It would have needed an exceptionally strong confundus charm to bamboozle that goblet into forgetting that only three schools compete in the tournament. I'm guessing they submitted Potter's name under a fourth school to make sure he was the only one in his category."

"Could that confundus charm be the reason I was chosen?" I asked. "A side effect of whoever messed with the goblet ot try and kill Harry?"

"How this situation arose, we do not know," said Dumbledore. "It seems to me, however, that we have no choice but to accept it. Both Marcus and Harry have been chosen to compete in the Tournament. This, therefore, they will do."

"Ah, but Dumbledore-"

"My dear Madame Maxime, if you have an alternative, I would be delighted to hear it," said Dumbledore.

No one had a way out of this situation. Whoever was trying to kill Harry this year had done a very good job cutting off our options. Bagman was the only person who seemed happy.

"Well, shall we crack on, then," said Bagman with an excited grin. "Got to give our champions their instructions, haven't we? Barty, want to do the honors?"

"Yes, instructions. Yes. The first task," said Crouch, suddenly coming to his senses. He'd clearly been in deep thought. "The first task is designed to test your daring, so we are not going to be telling you what it is. Courage in the face of the unknown is an important quality in a wizard. Very important.

"The first task will take place on November the twenty fourth in front of the other students and the panel of judges. The champions are not permitted to ask for or accept any kind of help from their teachers to complete the tasks in the tournament. The champions will face the first challenge armed only with their wands. They will receive information about the second task when the first is over. Owing to the demanding and time consuming nature of the tournament, the champions are exempt from end of year tests.

"I think that's all, is it, Albus?"

"I think so," said Dumbledore. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to stay at Hogwarts tonight, Barty?"

"No, Dumbledore," replied Crouch. "I must get back to the Ministry. It is a very busy, very difficult time at the moment. I've left young Weasley in charge. Very enthusiastic. A little overenthusiastic if truth be told."

After a few parting words to the other judges, Dumbledore turned toward Harry and I, smiling benignly again. Apparently Moody's theory had returned us to his good graces. "Harry, Marcus, I suggest you go up to bed. I am sure Gryffindor and Ravenclaw are waiting to celebrate with you, and it would be a shame to deprive them of this excellent excuse to make a great deal of mess and noise."

I was never popular in Ravenclaw. I didn't play Quidditch. I hung around with members of other houses. And I stuck up for Luna Lovegood. Beyond that, I was prone to long hours studying alone. So, I didn't know how to cope when I entered the common room and the entire house cheered for me. I was congratulated again and again, both for being chosen, and for bypassing Dumbledore's age line.

* * *

I got up early the next day and found my way to the library. I'd finally, after three years, gotten used to the filing system. I had to resolutely ignore the other Ravenclaw students who continue to stop me to offer congratulations and ask how I'd done it.

After an hour or so, a welcome sight appeared. Sloth had come looking for me, followed by the other members of our parseltongue club. They settled in at the table I was working at.

"What are you doing here, Greed?" asked Sloth, glancing at the heavy tomes laid out before me.

"I'm researching binding magical contracts," I said. "I can't believe they'd use one of these for a school competition."

"Why?" asked Harry.

"It's like the unbreakable vow," I said. Ron winced. "If you break the terms, you die."

"Well, that makes sense," said Hermione, eliciting stares. "I mean, this contest is really dangerous. Loads of people have died competing. If they had any other option, I'm sure they would've backed out."

"What bothers me most is that the Goblet of Fire can apparently get confunded into letting you enter someone else into a binding magical contract," I continued. "I mean, at least I actually put my name in the cup. I was an idiot doing it, but I did it."

"How did you manage that?" asked Ron, drawing stares of his own. Abashedly, he said, "I was just curious."

I hissed in parseltongue, "I'm not human, remember? I'm an immortal shape shifter who chooses to look fourteen."

"I think Moody was right," said Harry. "My name got entered under a fourth school by whoever did this. You're the real Hogwarts champion."

Still in parseltongue, I hissed, "I am not a wizard. You are the only wizard from Hogwarts in this tournament." I gestured to my fake wand, covered in alchemic script, most of which Ron could now read and understand.

"So Hogwarts has two half-trained champions instead of one fully trained one each from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang," said Ginny. "I think you'll both surprise everyone with how well you do."

"The important thing is to stay alive," said Neville. "Whoever entered Harry probably did it hoping he'd get killed."

"Moody said the same thing," I said.

"It was probably a teacher," said Luna, glancing down at one of my open books. "Harry puts his name on all his assignments, so they could use his real signature."

"Moody's the obvious suspect," said Sloth. "He's new, and we haven't had good luck with defense professors."

"There's also Professor Snape," said Neville. "I know he helped us with occlumency last year, but he was a death eater."

"Professor Trelawney keeps predicting Harrry's death," offered Ron. "Maybe she decided to help it along."

"If Snape wanted to kill me, he's had plenty of chances," said Harry.

"And Trelawney's a fraud, but I don't think she'd resort to something like this," said Hermione.

"Dad thinks highly of Moody, and Dumbledore trusts him," said Ginny.

"I guess we just have to keep an eye out for more clues," I said. "In the meantime, we try to get through these tasks without dying."

* * *

The immediate result of this four champions business was that the school split more or less along house lines. Ravenclaw was backing me to the hilt, just as Gryffindor was backing Harry. The Hufflepuffs seemed to think we were both cheaters and abstained from any cheer leading. Sloth stuck with me, and continued to be friends with Harry, which lost her some popularity in her house. The Slytherins, embarrassingly, threw their support behind me. Harry'd given them no end of trouble in the house and Quidditch cups, while I'd stayed under the radar until now. I coldly reminded Draco he'd once tried to kill my dog when he cheered for me in order to upset Harry.

I'd never cared in the slightest about the popularity contests among the student body, and I wasn't about to start now. The real problem as far as I was concerned, was slipping away from cheerers and jeerers to get into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. I had moved on to explaining the basics of soul attachment to Ron. We went over the soul coins I'd produced and discussed the effects of souls bound to armor. I also elaborated a bit about how my soul was attached to my homunculus body.

A couple weeks after being chosen as champion, I was unexpectedly called out of class for photographs for the Daily Prophet. I arrived at the same time as Harry. Viktor and Fleur were already waiting.

"Ah, there they are," declared Ludo Bagman. The other judges weren't there, but a woman and man I didn't recognize were also there. The man had a camera. "In you come, in you come. Nothing to worry about. It's just the wand weighing ceremony. The rest of the judges will be here in a moment."

"Wand weighing?" asked Harry before I could.

"We have to check that your wands are fully functional. No problems, you know, as they're your most important tools in the tasks ahead. The expert's upstairs now with Dumbledore. And then there's going to be a little photo shoot. This is Rita Skeeter." Bagman gestured toward the woman I didn't recognize. "She's doing a small piece on the tournament for the Daily Prophet."

My mind worked furiously. If they checked my wand, they'd find out it was fake. But Bagman knew about fake wands. I gripped my wand and transmuted it into a rubber chicken.

"Oh no," I said, holding up the chicken. "I must've left my real wand in my dorm." I ran out of the room.

They would expect me back, and I'd have to have a working wand when I came. I took my time at the brass eagle knocker's riddle while I considered my options. It was unlikely they'd let me out of the tournament if I didn't have a usable wand. Borrowing someone else's had the twin risks of me not being able to use it and them being possibly identified as the real owner. That left me with only one real option.

Up in my trunk, I pulled out a wand I'd produced last year in an effort to test out my arithmancy understanding. It contained one of the unicorn hairs that Luna had harvested for me in second year for my ill fated attempt at replacing Ron's broken wand. This one had been tested, and worked for ordinary spell casting. I clapped my hands and transmuted my fake wand array onto the outermost surface of the wand and affixed a red stone to the tip. Assuming I hadn't screwed something up, this would work for both me and for a real wizard.

When I arrived back, Dumbledore was retrieving Harry and Rita Skeeter from a broom closet. I didn't ask what was going on. We entered the room where all the judges had now been gathered. There was another familiar face there.

"May I introduce Mr. Ollivander?" said Dumbledore, gesturing at one of the people in the wizarding world with the most cause to suspect I was a muggle. "He will be checking your wands to ensure that they are in good condition before the tournament."

"Mademoiselle Delocour, could we have you first?" asked the white haired wand maker. Fleur handed over her wand and he examined it. "Nine and a half inches, inflexible, rosewood, and containing... dear me."

"A hair from the head of a veela," Fleur supplied. "One of my grandmother's."

"Yes, yes," said Ollivander. "I've never used veela hair myself, of course. I find it makes for rather temperamental wands, however to each his own, and if it suits you... Orchideous!" Fleur's wand produced a bouquet of flowers. Ollivander handed them to Fleur along with her wand. "Very well, very well, it's in fine working order.

"Mr. Krum, if you please," continued Ollivander, accepting Viktor's wand. "Hm, this is a Gregorovitch creation unless I'm much mistaken? A find wand maker, though the styling is never quite what I... however... Yes hornbeam and dragon heartstring? Rather thicker than one usually sees, quite rigid, two and a quarter inches, Avus!" A number of small births blasted from the end and flew out the window. He handed the wand back to Krum.

"Mr. Oren, is this a joke?" he asked taking my wand. "What is this crystal on the tip? It looks like decorative runes along the length. My, my. Thirteen inches, unyielding, yew, and... unicorn hair? Who made this?"

"I did," I admitted. "You couldn't match me, so I had to make due."

"You couldn't match a wand to a wizard?" asked Bagman incredulously. "I never thought I'd live to see the day."

"I have had precisely two failures in my career," said Ollivander. "This young man was one of them. Resorting to this, though... Less used than I would expect from an active Hogwarts student."

"I had to replace it recently," I said.

"Given the craftsmanship, I can see why," said Ollivander. "I've seen better results from a first year wandmaker's apprentice. It's probably serviceable at charms, but any serious transfiguration and I wouldn't want to be in the same room."

"Does this mean it needs to be replaced?" asked Bagman.

"I've only ever been able to get good results out of wands I make," I said.

Ollivander handed me back my wand and said, "This wand is unacceptable. I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to compete with this... wand. If Mr. Oren insists on using a wand fashioned by his own hands, I shall bring appropriate tools and materials this Saturday and supervise the construction of a new wand. In the meantime, be very careful with that.

"Which leaves, Mr. Potter. Yes, yes, yes, how well I remember. Cored with the tail feather of a very particular phoenix. Let's have a look." Ollivander ran his fingers gently along the shaft of wood, looking for imperfections. After a long examination, he caused Harry's wand to produce a stream of wine and returned it. "Perfect condition, just as it was the day I sold it."

The subsequent photo shoot took hours. Individual shots, group shots, arranged by height, arranged by school. Fleur seemed to have inherited some veela power, as the camera man seemed to keep trying to get more shots of her. By the time I managed to get back to Ravenclaw tower, it was clear I'd need to pull an all nighter to finish all my remaining homework and keep my schedule clear for Ollivander.

* * *

There was some good news for me and bad news for Harry when Rita Skeeter's article came out. It was apparently entirely about Harry and his participation. My name wasn't even mentioned. Mind you, the Harry Potter in the article bore little resemblance to the wizard I knew. A lot of quotes were included I couldn't imagine Harry saying.

Harry got our full condolences at our fencing lessons. Beyond the article, the Slytherins had taken to handing out batches that alternated between saying, "Support Marcus Oren, the real Hogwarts champion," and "Potter Stinks." That, at least, we could do something about. We quickly whipped up batches supporting each of us, and pinned one another's badge to our shirts.

Harry did have some good news to share once Headless Nick had left. He'd heard back form Sirius Black, and Sirius was going to try to speak to them in the Grffindor common room in a couple weeks. Since most of our group were Gryffindors, they shouldn't have too much trouble.

Ollivander arrived that Saturday and set up our things in an empty classroom. He went over the properties of the three core materials, and those of the woods he had brought. He ruled out certain combinations and advised length ranges for selected combinations. This was far more complicated than I had thought. It took all day, but I managed to assemble a rigid oak wand with a dragon heartstring core, eleven inches long. He still wasn't happy about the array and the red stone, but I insisted they were an important inheritance from my homeland. In the end, he called the effort acceptable, and suggested I study wand lore further, perhaps even consider making a career of it.

* * *

Author's comments:  
While Greed may assume the Goblet of Fire screwed up in selecting him, the decision is really about who's most suited to meet the challenges of the tournament.


	28. Chapter 38: The First Task

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 38) The First Task  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The weekend before the first Triwizard task was a Hogsmeade weekend. Neville was still banned from those trips due to misplacing his password list last year, which Sirius Black used to infiltrate Gryffindor tower. He'd been misblamed for that, since the list was stolen by Hermione's pet kneezle cat Crookshanks at Sirius' request. We'd gotten the details only long after the fact through continuing correspondences with Sirius.

For Ginny and Luna, this would be their first Hogsmeade trip, and we were looking forward to showing them the sights. Harry, for his part, was so frustrated with the way the student body had turned against him, he agreed to join us, but only while spending the whole trip under his invisibility cloak. I offered to pop down to my lab and grab a vial of polyjuice I'd stocked the previous year just in case, so Neville could use Harry's appearance, but he said he'd just work on homework up at the castle.

"Is that really the cloak your father used back in school?" I asked Harry as we visited the main sights of Hogsmeade. "My cloak is only seven years old with all the time turning, but it's already fading visible. I know I didn't cheap out on our cloaks."

"Now that you mention it, it is kind of weird," said Ron. "Usually an invisibility cloak would have torn, faded, or been disenchanted as old as it is, but it's still perfect."

"I'm sure I remember my father talking about something like this before," said Luna. "I'll send him an owl tonight when we get back to the castle."

"Are you ready to talk to Sirius tonight?" asked Sloth.

"We should probably pick up a few more dung bombs at Zonko's just in case," said Ron, directing our group toward the joke shop.

After emerging with our goods, we avoided bumping into Rita Skeeter and headed into the Three Broomsticks. Ron got us a round of butterbeer, and we settled in to talk while we drank.

"I just don't know what's wrong with the Society for the Promotion of Elvish Welfare," said Hermione for the hundredth time.

"You can't have an acronym for your organization that makes people think of throwing up," said Sloth in an exhausted tone.

"But that's exactly how people ought to feel about the way house elves are treated," argued Hermione.

"I still don't know what's wrong with the House Elf Liberation Front," said Ron, nursing his drink.

"Because most of them don't want to be liberated," said Sloth. "Look at how hard Winky took it."

"Have we tried the Wizards for the Ethical Treatment of House Elves?" asked Luna.

"It'd remind the muggleborns of a group of nutters," said Harry. "And they're the most likely to be the ones to see something wrong with the way house elves are treated."

It was an argument that never went anywhere, so it was ideal for sharing drinks over on a lazy autumn afternoon. Ginny had just come up with the most ridiculous name yet when we caught sight of Hagrid and Mad-Eye Moody. Moody tapped HAgrid on the shoulder and led the groundskeeper over to us. As Hagrid offered greetings, Mad-Eye Moody subtly leaned down near Harry's chair and said, "Nice cloak, Potter," in a low voice. He grinned as best his scarred face would allow.

"Can your eye-? I mean, can you-?" sputtered Harry.

"Yeah, it can see through invisibility cloaks," replied Moody, "and it's come in useful at times, I can tell you."

"Is there anything that eye can't see?" I asked, frustrated.

Moody shook his head and replied, "If it came down to it, Death's own cloak might not be enough. It's a unique bit of magic. You'll never find another eye like it."

Hagrid said goodbye and both he and Moody left. With my hopes of escaping the gaze of that eye under an invisibility cloak dashed, I found myself wishing I was drinking something stronger than butterbeer. Harry's voice drew my attention.

"Why does Hagrid want me to meet him at midnight?"

"When did he ask that?" asked Ginny.

"Just now, when Greed was talking to Moody," replied Harry.

Hagrid didn't know about the meeting with Sirius, and after some discussion about whether he should risk going or not, I took off my time turner and passed it to Harry under his cloak. There was no point cutting things close. I reminded him how to use it safely and emphasized that I was going to need the magical hourglass back in the morning. I also advised him to make sure Moody wasn't nearby with the Marauder's Map so he wouldn't be caught out at night with my time turner despite his invisibility cloak.

* * *

The next morning, I got up early and waited in the Great Hall long after I finished my breakfast. Luna arrived while I waited, and an owl dropped off a letter. It was a response from her father. She invited me to read it with her. Most of the letter was pleasantries and well wishes from father to daughter. There was only a small bit in reference to the cloak.

"I am delighted your friends have taken an interest in the legendary Cloak of Invisibility. From what you've told me about them, I never would have guessed they were the type to seek knowledge of the Deathly Hallows. If they aren't already familiar with the tale, I would start them on the Tale of the Three Brothers."

At the bottom of the letter was a symbol. An equilateral triangle circumscribing a circle, with a line bisecting it from its base to its top tip, running through the circle.

"Oh, wow," said Luna. "Harry'll want to hear about this."

"I don't understand," I admitted.

Luna turned to me and said, "Professor Moody was right. Harry has Death's own Invisibility Cloak."

Luna hopped up and rushed over to the door as Harry came in accompanied by Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny. I got up to follow. Luna showed them her father's letter.

Harry had other things on his mind, however. Rather than stay and listen to Luna's explanation about his cloak, he pulled me aside and hissed urgently in parseltongue, "Dragons! The first task is dragons!"

"What?" I hissed back.

"Hagrid took me out into the forest last night," Harry explained. "I was under the cloak so no one could see. I saw Ron's brother Charlie and a bunch of other wizards. They had four full grown dragons for the first trial. One for each of us. We'll each have to get past one."

"That's a relief," I hissed as I accepted my time turner back and stuffed it under my robes. "We can do dragons. We helped raise Norbert."

"No, you're not getting it," replied Harry. "Norbert was a baby. These are full grown dragons. Bigger than Hagrid's house with armored skin most spells can't penetrate. It took half a dozen stunning spells each to knock one out, cast all at the same time. Sirius thinks I should try and blind it, but I'm worried that'll just make it mad."

"Harry, calm down," I said.

"And Sirius thinks he knows who put my name in the Goblet of Fire. Turns out Karkaroff was a Death Eater. The Ministry let him out because he named names. He also agrees that Bertha Jorkins, the Ministry official who went missing, ran into Voldemort in Albania. Sirius figures Voldemort found out about the tournament from her and had his servant enter me in so they could kill me and make it look like an accident."

"Okay Harry, what do you need from me?" I asked. "I can have my suits of armor keep an eye on Karkaroff when he's in the castle and report anything suspicious. We can head down to the Chamber of Secrets, I can turn into a dragon so you can practice fighting one. I can help you research spells in the library. You name it."

"I don't suppose you could make me immortal before the first task so the dragon can't kill me, could you?" Harry half-joked.

"I could," I said very seriously. "We have a private place to do the work, the ingredients other than red stones are dirt cheep and plentiful, and I've got a huge stock of red stones. We could go now and you'd be a homunculus before lunch."

"Seriously?" asked Harry.

I nodded. "There are downsides. Mostly that you won't age normally anymore so you'll have to learn enough shape shifting to fake it. That's why I haven't offered to do it before now. Figured you'd want your default forms to be adults if and when I made you guys immortal. But if you want it now, we can do it now."

Harry weighed his options. Being fourteen forever was certainly a downside worth taking seriously. Ultimately, he said, "You can really do it that fast?"

I nodded.

"Then let's make that plan B. If I don't come up with something better by Tuesday."

We returned to the group in time to hear Ron angrily saying, "Luna, we don't have time to go chasing after fairy tales. Harry needs to figure out how to fight a dragon. We can talk about this Hallows business after we're sure Harry'll live to the end of Tuesday."

* * *

We spent all of Sunday pouring over books on dragons. Ron, Sloth, and I assimilated their contents using red stones before passing the books along to the others at the table, then going to get more off the shelves. Viktor Krum was also studying hard in the library. Harry was sure Karkaroff and Maxime had warned their champions about the dragons as well.

Unsurprisingly, none of the books on dragons or dragon handling had suggestions for fighting them using spells at our grade level. Ron's brother Charlie was a fully trained wizard and a specialist in dragons, and even he had been sporting a nasty burn on the back of his hand when we went to the Quidditch World Cup with him.

My strategy had taken shape very quickly. I had both the combat experience and the assurance of my own immortality to be able to keep my cool and confront it directly using just a couple of spells from second year. For Harry, that would be too risky, given that he was already near panic.

We didn't have a solid plan for Harry by the time we had to get to bed that day, and classes resumed the next day. At lunch, Harry grabbed the lot of us and brought us to an empty classroom. Moody had worked out that we knew from our library trip and offered Harry some advice that Harry'd managed to formulate into a functional plan. He would summon his broomstick and out fly the dragon. To do this, though, he needed our help with his summoning charms. With a plan A, a plan B, and my offer to make him a homunculus dropped down to plan C, he was about as calm as a fourteen year old boy told he had to fight a dragon could be.

* * *

Tuesday morning, Harry reported that he'd gotten the hang of the summoning charm last night, so I could save up my human transmutation offer for the second task. Sloth promised to record the entire thing with her omniocculars, both to give us the chance to see ourselves in action, and to analyze our competition. She gave me a kiss goodbye for luck as I headed out to the grounds with the other champions.

I was led to a small tent where the champions were to be isolated, to keep the later contestants from stealing ideas from the ones who went first, I presumed. Fleur was pale and sitting very still, while Vikor was hunched over and folded in on himself. Both looked as nervous as Harry in their own way. Ludo Bagman was waiting for us and greeted us as we arrived, then he offered explanations.

"Well, now we're all here, time to fill you in. When the audience has assembled, I'm going to be offering each of you this bag from which you will each select a small model of the thing you are about to face. There are different, er, varieties you see. And I have to tell you something else too. Ah yes, your task is to collect the golden egg."

After a few minutes, we heard most of the school assemble outside. Once the crowd was in place, Bagman offered us the sack, and we each pulled out animated sculptures of a different dragon breed, each with a number tag set around its neck. Bagman explained that the number represented the order we'd face our dragon in. I'd drawn dragon number one, the Swedish short snout, and the most beautiful dragon in the competition with its blue scales.

As the first champion, I stepped out of the tent when signaled. A stadium for the spectators had been magically erected while we waited in the tent. My blue scaled Swedish short snout dragon was chained down at the opposite side of the stadium, wrapping its body protectively around a clutch of eggs, one of which was the golden egg I had to retrieve. Cheers came up from about half of the students gathered when I appeared.

Searching the stands, I found Sloth and tossed her my dragon model for safe keeping. Then I pointed my wand at my throat and said, "Sonorus!" Using alchemy on the air in the stadium, I produced sound waves emulating my voice that filled the stadium.

"My name is Greed. I know some of you don't like that Harry and I are in this tournament. You think we cheated our way in, and that by being here, we cheated Hogwarts out of its chance at the Triwizard Cup. Today we're going to prove that a Hogwarts fourth year is as good as the best Beauxbatons and Durmstrang have to offer."

I muttered "Quietus," as I stopped transmuting the air in case anyone was paying attention, then I turned to face my dragon. I marched toward the creature, my wand at the ready. A jet of blue fire launched at me from its mouth. I muttered the incantation to the flame freezing charm and didn't break my stride. The flames flowed around me, but by alchemically controlling the heat transfer of a skintight layer of air around me, I stepped right out of the fire closer to the nest.

My eyes never left the dragon, who, seeing its flames fail to deter me lashed out to try and snap my head off with its jaws. I had my wand up and called out the incantation for the shield charm, and the dragon's head bounced off a disk of alchemically suspended air. I flicked my wand left, then right, raising shields as it tried to use its fore claws to rake at me from the side. When those failed, it tried the flame breath again, which again was countered by my emulation of the flame freezing charm.

The whole time, I hadn't slowed my stride, and was now in the nest proper. I stooped down and scooped up the golden egg in my left arm, and threw another shield over my shoulder, which deflected another attempt by the dragon to land a bite. Then I straighted up, turned around, and started walking back.

The dragon clearly thought I'd taken one of her actual eggs and flew into a rage. Her tail whipped around, to be blocked by a shield on one side. Her head snapped toward me from the opposite side a second later. I reversed my wand and deflected that strike as well. Her wings beat and she hovered enough to slash at me with her powerful hindclaws, which I continued to block, an the flame breath after was neutralized like the previous attempts.

Once back at my starting position, unruffled, without a hair out of place, I raised my gold egg over my head an turned to the judges, to thunderous applause. The Hufflepuffs had joined in.

I took a seat near Sloth, who muttered affectionately, "Show off." I smiled back and gave her a kiss while the judges put up their scores. Then I turned to watch how the other champions did it.

Fleur lulled her dragon into an enchanted sleep, retrieving her egg easily and gracefully, but accidentally getting hit by a jet of flame from a random snore. She suffered only minor burns, however, and was able to easily extinguish herself with a water conjuring charm. Viktor apparently had the same idea as Sirius and cursed his dragon right in the eye and retrieved his egg without taking a scratch while the dragon ran in circles in agony, even breaking some of its own eggs in its flailing. Simple,brutal, and effective.

Harry immediately used the summoning charm we'd been helping him with to retrieve hsi broomstick. Once in the air, he zoomed, dodged, feinted, and outmaneuvered his dragon with all the expertise he showed in Quidditch. He avoided the flames expertly, but got a nasty looking gouge on his arm from the tail. Used to playing through pain, Harry lured it into an attack, then swooped down beneath it and claimed his golden egg.

The school was now united in cheering on its two champions, and Harry's stress levels seemed to go down for the first time since he'd been chosen as champion. It didn't hurt that he was tied with Krum for second place. My score had slightly edged them out. The champions were called into the tent again for our explanations about the second task. Ludo Bagman was again providing.

"Well done, all of you! Now, just a few quick words. You've got a nice long break before the second task, which will take place at half past nine on the morning of February the twenty fourth, but we're giving you something to think about in the meantime! If you look down at those golden eggs you're all holding, you will see that they open. See the hinges there? You need to solve the clue inside the egg, because it will tell you what the second task is, and enable you to prepare for it! All clear? Sure? Well, off you go, then!"

We all headed back up to the castle, and Harry casually brushed off Rita Skeeter's attempt to get a post-task interview. Once at the castle, we split up and returned to our respective common rooms. Sloth returned my dragon figure before we split up.

* * *

All of Ravenclaw were beside themselves with glee that I'd taken the lead in the tournament. The resulting celebration that ran well into the night made for an opportunity to remind them all that Harry and I were friends first and competitors second, and that Hogwarts needed to stand united behind both champions.

In the course of the festivities, I was convinced to open the egg so my fellow Ravenclaws could have a crack at the clue. The rules said I couldn't accept help from a teacher. There was nothing in there about not getting help from other students. I opened the egg, and it emitted a horrible wailing sound, like some sort of evil music box. A lot of guesses came in about what it meant, but no one cracked the puzzle that night.

Rita Skeeter attempted to ambush Harry into another interview during our next Care of Magical Creatures class. When that failed, she feigned interest in the blast ended skrewts to make Hagrid forget he'd said Dumbledore had banned her from the grounds. By the end of the lesson, she'd sweet talked him into an interview in Hogsmeade about the skrewts.

I continued to work on my egg during the times between returning to Ravenclaw tower and lights out. I tried taking a pepper imp from Honeydukes and breathing fire on the egg before opening it to see if that changed the sound. I put my Swedish short snout model inside the egg in the hopes that would make a difference. I tried muffling the sound with a pillow to see if a decrease in volume would help. I was no closer to understanding the clue for my efforts.

Ron's alchemy lessons, by contrast, were coming along well. By my reckoning, he'd be finished with soul attachments and ready to move on to human transmutation by the new year.

Luna kept guiding our conversations towards Harry's invisibility cloak when we were all together. She was convinced it was the invisibility cloak that had formerly belonged to Death, and that it was part of a set of three objects won from Death by three brothers. The other two Hallows were the Elder Wand, said to make its user invincible in a duel, and the Resurrection Stone, able to call dead loved ones back from the land of the dead by turning it three times in your palm. The story these items came from suggested that the other two Hallows were a trap and that their powers would eventually lead to ruin for whoever wielded them.

With few leads to pursue on my egg, I decided to see what more I could find out about the Deathly Hallows in the Hogwarts library. At least confirm or deny Luna's claims that various stories about wizards, usually dark wizards, with exceptionally powerful wands all referred to the same artifact surfacing again and again throughout history. I amused myself by imagining the Elder Wand might be able to boost some infinitesimal, undetectable spark of magic in me to the point that I could cast real spells with it.

I was sitting at a table going over a chart I'd put together of supposed wielders of the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, and others that were supposedly aliases of the Elder Wand when Viktor Krum stormed over toward me furiously. His wand was in his hand and ready to fire off a spell in my direction. He pointed with his nonwand hand toward one of my papers where I'd doodled the Deathly Hallows symbol in the corner.

"What do you think you're doing with that?" Viktor yelled. All eyes turned in our direction.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. Then, in a motion too quick for the eye to see, I'd drawn my wand and had it pointed up at him. "Put your wand down."

"We had people like you in Durmstrang," said Viktor, his eyes blazing with rage. "You draw the dark lord Grindewald's symbol on your things and think it makes you seem cool."

"Grindewald?" I asked, confused as ever.

"My grandfather died at his hands, and no one is going to go around glorifying what he did!"

Krum hit me with the same curse he'd used against his dragon. I was blinded, and a searing pain burned in my damaged eyes. I'd felt worse. I knew where he was even blinded, and launched an attack of my own back at him. I temporarily overstimulated his nervous system with some intricate alchemy to emulate a stunning spell. I heard Krum drop to the ground with a loud thump.

"Out of the way," I heard Moody's voice call. He reversed Krum's curse and I was able to see once again. Moody turned to Madam Pince and said, "Let Karkaroff know his student's unconscious on the floor here after trying to hex his competition. You come with me to my office, boy."

Moody led me out to the Defense professor's office. I recognized a damaged sneakoscope on a shelf, as well as a number of other devices and objects I presume to be dark detectors of some sort or another. I took a seat, and Moody stretched out his prosthetic equipped leg as he sat down.

"I saw what happened in there," said Moody, pointing at his magic eye. "I'll let Flitwick know you were defending yourself."

"Thanks," I said. Moody was a famous Auror, so there was probably no better person to ask the question that was still running through my mind. "Who is Grindewald?"

"Albus doesn't like talking about it," said Moody chuckling, "but Grindewald's the reason You-Know-Who was always afraid to confront Dumbledore directly. Grindewald was a powerful dark wizard who had all of europe terrorized. Then Dumbledore stepped in and put a stop to him. Beat him soundly in one of the most spectacular duels of all time. Why do you ask?"

"Krum thought I was showing support for Grindewald with this symbol." I drew it in the air with my wand, where the lines glowed briefly, then faded. "That's why he attacked me."

"I've never heard of Grindewald being associated with any particular sign. Even so, if that really is what he thinks, or even if it isn't, you need to watch yourself. You can be sure he isn't about to drop this after he gets hit with one stunning hex. I'd suggest you invest in some decent dark detectors, but mine have been on the fritz since I got here. The sneakoscope and secrecy sensor are extra sensitive, and I had to disable them. The foe glass still works, but that won't wake you in the dead of night when you really need it."

"I'll probably look into a set next Hogsmeade weekend to go with my bed stand sneakoscope," I said.

"So," he said, changing the subject, "how's the egg coming along?"

"It isn't," I said. "No matter what I do, the only thing that happens when I open it is a loud wailing sound comes out."

"And of course, the rules say you can't ask for help from your teachers. No, I'm not about to offer it anyway. I will say I don't trust Maxime and Karkaroff to stick to those rules. You can bet Fleur and Krum aren't blundering in the dark. Now, it does seem to me, Krum's just handed you an excellent reason to take an interest in where he goes and what he's up to."

"You're saying I should spy on Krum to find out what he knows about the egg."

"I'm not saying anything," replied Moody with a grin, "but now that you mention it, that does sound like a clever idea."

* * *

"He attacked you?!" shrieked Hermione when I'd explained what happened to the others.

"What happened to him?" asked Sloth meaningfully.

"I just stunned him," I assured her.

"Why would he attack you?" asked Ron. "If he went around hexing everyone who bet him, we'd have heard about nasty things happening to the Irish Quidditch team."

"He said it was because the Hallows symbol was used by Grindewald," I said. "He thought I was showing support for the wizard who killed his grandfather."

"He didn't give you a chance to explain?" asked Hermione.

"It'd be like if he was wandering around with the Dark Mark on his things," said Harry. "We'd probably jump to conclusions too."

"What would Grindewald have to do with the Deathly Hallows?" asked Luna. "They aren't dark artifacts."

"His name was on a list I was working on of possible holders of the Elder Wand," I said. "It's what I was working on when Krum attacked me."

"You want to clear this up quick, Greed," said Ginny. "You don't want him to think you're a dark lord wannabe."

"I was planning to next chance I get," I said. "Grindewald isn't the first evil man who took a positive symbol and tainted it through dark deeds done under its banner."

"He'll probably be avoiding you," said Harry.

"Or going straight after you the first chance he gets," added Neville who looked worried for me.

"We're in the tournament together. I'll see him eventually," I said.

"Speaking of the tournament, how's the egg thing going?" asked Sloth.

"I've got a new angle to try," I said. "I'll let you know if it pans out."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Information about the Deathly Hallows coming up right at the end of the series always felt unnatural to me. If the stories were always there, there was no good reason for them not to be in the wizarding world's idioms and generally come up in conversation. With Krum's history with Grindewald and the symbol, it seemed only natural for fourth year to be the point information starts coming out about them, even if the whole story takes a bit longer.


	29. Chapter 39: The Yule Ball

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 39) The Yule Ball  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Ravenclaw tower had the best view of all the house common rooms. It was trivial to set up a stand to mount my omniocculars on, pointed toward the Durmstrang ship. With the other Ravenclaws properly on my side for a change, I could leave it set up all day with a do not disturb sign. I could review the footage each evening at high speed and slow it down if anything interesting happened.

I still hadn't gotten a chance to talk to Krum when an announcement was made in Charms. Professor Flitwick explained that as part of the tournament festivities, there would be a Yule Ball, which was a formal party with dancing. All students fourth year and up were allowed to attend, as could younger guests if they came as the date of an older student. It was to take place on the evening of Christmas day.

The Triwizard champions and their dance partners traditionally opened the ball. Hopefully, that meant I could talk to Krum there if I couldn't catch him before that point. When we gathered for fencing that evening, I took a quick tally and smiled, noting we had an even gender balance. Apparently, they'd gotten announcements themselves.

"If you want to go to the ball with them, just ask them," Sloth was saying to Hermione and Ginny, exasperated. "If you wait for them to make a move, who knows how long you'll be waiting? Greed didn't get it until I stripped naked in front of him."

Ginny and Hermione looked scandalized. Sloth was just rolling her eyes.

"To be fair," I said, "you did that to try and win an argument about how unattractive you were and how no one would ever want to be with you."

Sloth blushed at the reminder, and I smiled and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

"It turns out me and Harry having dates to the ball is mandatory," I said, wrinkling my nose at the idea of mandatory dating. "Would you like to come with me?"

"You didn't think I'd let you take anyone else, did you?" asked Sloth. "Of course I'll go with you."

"We can finally make up for missing out on the dancing at Sir Nicholas' deathday party," I said.

"Now, you two," said Sloth, turning on Ginny and Hermione. "I'm not going to listen to you both complaining all the way till Christmas about not getting asked. Both of you, march up to them this instant and ask them to the ball."

"But-" started Ginny.

"Now!"" snapped Sloth.

Ginny went over to Harry, and Hermione approached Ron. I turned to Sloth and asked, "Have they been annoying you that bad?"

"You have no idea," replied Sloth. "I don't know what books Hermione's been reading, but she's got it in her head that you get a boy to like you by flirting with everyone but him. Like if he sees you dating someone else, it'll make him want you more, instead of doing the reasonable thing and backing off and being happy for you."

"Wow, that is bad advice," I agreed.

"And she was trying to drag Ginny along in that scheme," said Sloth. "I keep hearing about it because they keep including me in 'girl talk'."

"Actually, I was thinking about asking someone else," Harry was saying apologetically.

"Who?" asked Ginny.

"Cho. Cho Chang from Ravenclaw," replied Harry.

"When you see her, can you ask for my History of Magic essay back?" asked Luna.

Harry blinked and asked, "She's in fifth year. Why would she have your History of Magic essay?"

"Nargles," said Luna. "Ravenclaw tower's busy with them. They stole my paper when I was asleep and hid it in one of her books. I saw it there the next day and tried to explain, but I don't think she believed me."

Harry's face hardened. "I'll get your paper back," he said. Then he turned to Ginny and asked, "Still want to go to the ball with me?"

Ginny smiled. "More than ever. I'll come with you when you talk to Cho."

Neville looked around the room briefly, then walked over to Luna and said, "Do you want to come to the ball with me?"

Luna looked at Neville for a long moment, then said, "I didn't think I'd get to go. I'll write home and have some dress robes owled in."

"Speaking of which," I said, clapping my hands. I transmuted a small pendant in the shape of a key with a transmutation circle on it. I set a red stone fragment in an open space and handed it to Luna. "Touch this to your trunk and it'll be sealed so no unlocking charm can open it. Touch it again to unlock it. Think of it as an early Christmas present. To keep out the Nargles."

* * *

Harry and Ginny both got detentions after retrieving Luna's paper. Cho'd been subjected to a particularly nasty hex from Ginny at some point in the confrontation. Both agreed it was worth it.

Viktor Krum wasn't coming back into the castle to read in the library since our brief duel. My surveillance of the Durmstrang ship showed he was still alive and in good health. He'd taken to stepping out on dock, stripping to his trunks, and diving into the cold December water of the lake. I verified none of the other Durmstrang students were taking dips in the lake, and that no one else in Ravenclaw had noticed him doing it before the dragons. This was the sort of clue I'd been looking for.

On a night I'd have to be awake at midnight for Astronomy lessons anyway, I slippe on my new invisibility cloak, grabbed my golden egg, and made my way down through the castle to where the hidden boat landing the first year students arrived in was. I folded my cloak next to the water, set my wand and time turner on top, and shifted my clothes to a set of black, skintight swimming trunks. Then I slipped into the ice cold water with my egg.

Viktor had spent a lot of time underwater, so I allowed myself to sink beneath the surface, then I opened my egg. Opening it underwater, the shrieking, wailing sound was modulated into a comprehensible song.

"Come seek us where our voices sound,  
We cannot sing above the ground,  
And while you're searching, ponder this:  
We've taken what you'll surely miss,  
An hour long you'll have to look,  
And to recover what we took,  
But past an hour, the prospect's black,  
Too late, it's gone, it wont' come back."

When I surfaced, I quickly verified that my cloak, wand, and time turner were still there. They hadn't been stolen while I listened to the message. Still, something I valued had been taken or would be taken before the second trial. I'd have an hour to search underwater or whatever the beings who made this recording took would be gone forever.

This was far worse than the dragons. I'd taken some swimming lessons, but I still wasn't great in the water. I didn't have to breathe, but that didn't excuse me from giving an explanation for how I was able to stay underwater so long anyway. And if I couldn't manage it inside the time limit, it wasn't just losing points int he tournament. I'd lose something important to me.

I passed the details along to Harry the next time we met up, and suggested he confirm his egg said the same thing mine had. After a quick trip to the bathroom, he had confirmed it was the same message.

"I may need that homunculus body after all," said Harry. "You don't need to breathe, do you?"

"What about using Gillyweed?" asked Neville.

"What?" asked Harry.

"It's a water plant," said Neville. "Witches in the Mediterranean use them to dive underwater. The effects last about an hour. I've been reading a book with them in it."

"That's brilliant, Neville," said Harry.

"We should order some extras an practice with them," I suggested. "Get used to the effects before we have ot use it for rea."

"We also need to get it without Krum or Fleur seeing us do it," added Ron. "Otherwise, Hogwarts loses its edge."

"There's a Hogsmeade weekend before the second task," noted Hermione. "We can have the Gillyweed sent to the post office and pick it up there."

"Oh, incidentally," I said, "I think Dumbledore has the Elder Wand."

"Greed," said Hermione, "that's a fairy tale. We've been over this. The Deathly Hallows aren't real."

"Grindewald believed in them," I said. "At the very least, he thought he'd found the Elder Wand."

"But he didn't," said Ron. "He lost a duel with Dumbledore and was locked away in Nurmengard."

"And Dumbledore's wielded the wand Grindewald used to carry ever since. And it's made of elder wood."

"The whole point of the Elder Wand is that it always wins duels," argued Ron. "If Grindewald had it, Dumbledore wouldn't have won."

"Unless there was more to that duel than we know," I said. "If he found a way to trick Grindewald into fighting with another wand..."

"I can't believe this," exclaimed Hermione. "You're supposed to be the sensible one, Greed."

"Let's say you're right," said Harry. "That's two Hallows accounted for. Where's the third? What the Resurrection Stone does is unique. The Cloak and the Wand are just really good versions of regular objects. You find the Resurrection Stone, no one's going to doubt you."

* * *

The promise of the Yule Ball resulted in far more students staying for the Christmas holidays than usual. Though we didn't have the castle all to ourselves, we still had a lot of fun. The decorations were even more spectacular than usual in an attempt to impress our visitors from abroad.

Fleur had been having a hard time settling in to the castle all year. She clearly missed Beauxbatons, and spent much of her time comparing Hogwarts to her school unfavorably. It was posturing, no worse than what we were doing, but her veela heritage caused most of the boys to ignore the criticisms entirely (or back her up in an effort to gain her favor) and most of the girls to take extreme offense to every little thing she said. I was so glad Snape had drilled in the occlumency lessons so hard last year.

On Christmas day, I awoke to find a stack of gifts. The house elves, as usual, had delivered them with care and stealth. Molly Weasley had once again provided a hideous sweater. It was good to be reminded I was considered as good as family after helping rescue Ginny in second year, but the woman had terrible fashion sense. That was when I remembered that she had visited Diagon Alley on my behalf while I was at the World Cup, and picked out dress robes for me. As I suspected, they were the same horrible orange as the sweater.

Fortunately, I was in fact a talented alchemist, and had little trouble putting together some new formal wear. Something I hoped Sloth would appreciate, and in which I could make a statement at the ball proper.

Other gifts included a book of wizard fairy tales, an assortment of seeds form various magical plants from Neville, and a sampling of Fred and George's inventions including improved ton tongue toffees and canary creams that briefly turn the eater into a canary. The effects of the later lasted just long enough to get what had just happened before you molted your feathers and returned to normal.

After a long and vicious snowball fight, we all returned to our rooms to get changed before returning to the Great Hall. Sloth had apparently had the same reaction to whatever Mrs. Weasley had picked out for her as I did. We turned heads as we made our way through the crowd of students arm in arm.

Sloth had taken her hair out of its usual braids and allowed it to cascade down her back. She'd transmuted herself a long, sleeveless red dress and a pair of full length gloves to match. Her shoes were perfectly shined black flats.

I had donned an appropriately sized reproduction of my old Amestrian military uniform, with all rank insignia removed. I felt both formally attired, and at ease in the blue, gold trimmed outfit. My pistol holster had been replaced with a wand holster without impacting the uniform's look. The only thing missing was my silver pocket watch, which I'd turned in when I left the military.

"What are you wearing?" asked Harry, who was in green dress robes and standing off to the side.

"Traditional Amestrian formal wear," I said, prompting a giggle from Sloth.

The delegation from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang arrived, and everyone but the champions and their dates were sent in to the Great Hall. We were sent in as part of a formal procession and directed to the head table with the judges. Barty Crouch was absent, with Percy Weasley taking his place. It seemed Barty Crouch had taken ill. I made sure to take a seat next to Viktor Krum.

"Viktor, I want to apologize," I said as I sat down. "I honestly had no idea that symbol was associated with Grindewald. I looked up what he did after the fight, and I can say I want nothing to do with him. Will you accept my apology?"

"I am sorry too," said Krum, accepting my offered hand and shaking it. "I assumed the worst and did not let you explain. I have given my school a bad name with my outburst."

"Let's start over as friends," I suggested. "That is what this tournament is about, isn't it?"

"I would like that very much," replied Krum with relief in his voice. He'd clearly been agonizing over our scuffle as much as I had.

With that awkwardness behind me, I could relax and enjoy dinner. Rather than the usual method of the tables filling with food and us filling our own plates, we'd been given menus and speaking our order to our plate caused our requested item to appear. Sloth happily ordered pork chops and mashed potatoes, and I ordered the roast.

After everyone had eaten, it was time for the dancing. Dumbledore had hired a famous wizarding band called the Weird Sisters. The champions and partners were to open the dancing with a slow waltz. I paid attention to the other dancers only to the extent needed to avoid colliding with them.

Song after song, Sloth and I remained on the dance floor as a permanent feature. We didn't get tired, or sore, or thirsty, so there was little reason to stop dancing. Neither of us were very good at it on a technical level, but we made up for it with enthusiasm, and by the close of the ball, our dancing had improved noticeably.

It felt right, having my arms around her, dancing close, and showing affection in public. As though we had a right to have our feelings acknowledged. Officially, tonight was about the tournament and our foreign guests,but from the moment I managed to patch things up with Krum, the evening was all about Sloth and I.

* * *

A couple days after Christmas, our group had vanished up our fencing lessons in the Chamber of Secrets. Headless Nick had floated back up to the castle proper. Hermione stopped the others from leaving.

"Have a look," she said, holding up an official looking document. "I'm officially registered as an animagus." She turned briefly into a large bear to show it off. On resuming human form, she said, "We've all been working hard all year while you've been busy with that triwizard stuff. Though I am the only one who registered."

Luna took the form of a silvery moth. Ron became a red furred ferret. Ginny became a falcon. Neville just stood back, looking embarrassed.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked him.

"Well, this is really advanced transfiguration, and it can go really wrong if you don't do it perfectly, and you know I still have trouble with switching spells," Neville mumbled his way through a list of excuses.

"It's okay, Neville," said Harry. "Most witches and wizards never attempt this. My dad didn't try until he was in fifth year."

"Speaking of dangerous techniques that can go horribly wrong if you don't get them just right," I said, "we'll be starting in on your next major set of alchemy lessons tonight."

The others trickled out, with congratulations all around, leaving Ron and I alone. I double checked all the security, then turned to him.

"Okay, you've finished everything you need to know about soul attachments. Today's the day we start on human transmutation. The things you'll be learning represent the greatest taboo in Amestrian alchemy. In Amestris, performing a human transmutation is treated the same way using the unforgivable curses is treated here."

"Why?" asked Ron.

"Mostly because it's difficult, dangerous, costly,and doesn't work right for its intended purpose. Usually, when an alchemist attempted this, they would be trying to bring back the dead. It never works for that purpose, instead giving birth to a whole new life, utterly inhuman and in constant agony."

"So why are you teaching me it?" asked Ron.

"I can not," I offered. "As always, you're free to stop at any time. But I'm telling you this as a warning. If you don't have a mind and soul ready to attach when you perform your human transmutation, the result will still be alive, sentient, and more often than not, resentful of you for creating it. It's how Sloth was born.

"My method is different, but still carries a lot of the same risks as the traditional method. Under my process, you create a body with no mind ot speak of, attaching an existing mind and soul just like you would bind a soul to armor."

"Okay, you keep bringing up risks. Are you ready to explain that?"

"Once you've gathered the right ingredients and activated the circle, you will find yourself before what we call the Gate. It's a set of massive double doors in a place flooded with light. The doors will open and tiny imp like creatures with purple eyes and bodies made of shadow tear pieces of your body off you. You'll have a hard time noticing this, because while the Gate is opened, your mind will be flooded with all the knowledge in the universe. What we call the Truth.

"That sounds like a good thing, and it is, but it's also way more than a human mind can handle. You can only retain an infinitesimally small portion of the whole. One thing alchemists retain after exposure to the Truth is the knowledge of how to clasp your hands together and make an array with your body, circulating the energy within. It's how I transmute without a stone or a circle, just by clapping."

"Wait, can we go back to these creatures?" asked Ron with alarm.

"I don't know what they are," I admitted. "Some theorize they're the souls of the dead. Others posit they're a kind of larval form of homunculi. Whatever they are, they have the ability to break down your body parts with a touch. They can be fought, but you won't be able to on your first exposure to the Gate. They will take something from you. There is a risk that they will take everything."

"This sounds really dangerous."

"It is. This is why I was so insistent you not attempt bio alchemy on a human being. Human transmutation summons the Gate. There are other ways too, but this is usually what alchemists are doing when they see the Gate.

"In any case, Tom wants a homunculus body for himself. If you have a Philosopher's Stone, you can make one without seeing the Gate. With the Stone unavailable, the circle I'm going to teach you is the only way."

"Okay, so I make a homunculus based on myself, attach my soul to it, and I'm immortal like you. Is that it?"

"You can do it alone like that. I did. But it's a lot easier and safer if you've got someone with you. When a homunculus is created, its body is put together all wrong. Bones out of alignment. Mismatched organs. Raw, exposed nerves everywhere. It's absolute agony, worse than you can imagine. You don't gain a human form until you eat enough red stones. It's a lot easier if someone else attaches your soul and feeds you red stones."

"After that, as long as I've got red stones in me, I can regenerate and come back from anything."

"Even if you run out of red stones, you won't properly die. You just won't regenerate the fatal injury. If someone subsequently puts a red stone in your mouth and forces it down your throat, you'll regenerate back to life.

"Only two things can kill a homunculus permanently. Empty them of red stones and deliver a fatal wound in the presence of the remains of the human they were based on, or sacrifice them in a special transmutation circle that summons the Gate."

"So, once I learn this, I can make all my friends and family homunculi. We're only waiting on me, Harry, and the others because we'll stop ageing once we do this."

"There is another concern," I said. "Tommy tried to possess me and Sloth in first year. We kept him out with occlumency, but if we construct homunculus bodies for anyone without the training to resist, we might as well be handing him his resurrection on a silver platter."

* * *

Viktor Krum was back at his usual post at the Hogwarts library after our reconciliation at the Yule Ball. I made a point to stop by and talk to him. It turned out, he was rather sensitive about his accent, which was why one never heard him talk much. With a little encouragement, he opened up and proved a very friendly person. He'd been impressed by Harry's flying against the dragons and had been shocked when he'd been told I took on my dragon head on with just a flame freezing charm and a shield charm.

His English wasn't good enough for much subtlety, but he kept bringing the conversation around to Hermione. It turned out he had a crush on her. He'd wanted to ask her to the Yule Ball, but hid away in the Durmstrang ship after our duel, convinced she'd hate him for attacking one of her friends. I agreed to introduce them properly.

Ron was conflicted, but after being assured by Hermione, Viktor Krum was socializing with our group for the rest of the holiday. We learned a lot about Durmstrang from him once he got talking. At first, it seemed he was having trouble pronouncing Hermione's name, but after Sloth called him out on the fact that no fully trained wizard should be having this much trouble pronouncing unfamiliar words, given how important pronunciation was in spell casting, he admitted he was putting on. He just thought Hermione was cute when she was in teaching mode.

Krum was never let in on our secrets, which helped Ron feel more secure, though whenever Krum was trying to get Hermione's attention, Ron would become openly affectionate with her. Krum eventually got the hint. Fortunately, we were able to put all other hard feelings behind us, to the point that Ron even asked for an autograph.

* * *

Author's comments:  
The relationship drama in the original was never something I enjoyed, so this is more or less the last we'll be seeing of it in this fic.


	30. Chapter 40: Coming Out

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 40) Coming Out  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The first day of the new term, I got a surprise when I arrived at Care of Magical Creatures. Hagrid wasn't there. Substituting was a grey haired witch named Professor Grubbly-Plank, who deflected all our questions about where Hagrid was. Her lesson was on unicorns, and she brought the girls into a pen where she'd had one tied up.

Once she was out of earshot, Draco triumphantly provided the answer to what had happened to Hagrid in the form of a copy of the Daily Prophet. An article by Rita Skeeter claimed Hagrid was half giant, insinuating that his giantess mother had been on Voldemort's side during the war, and claimed with quotes from Draco that "We all hate Hagrid, but we're just too scared to say anything."

Draco was gloating that Hagrid would either be fired or resign in disgrace after this, and that now that people knew he was half giant, he was too ashamed to show his face. Draco escaped being cursed to within an inch of his life by Professor Grubbly-Plank drawing our attention and reminding us we were being watched by the faculty.

After Divination that day, Harry, Ron, Neville, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Sloth, and I went down to Hagrid's hut and knocked on the door. Fang could be heard inside, scratching at the door.

"Hagrid, it's us!" called out Harry.

No amount of calling for him led to him opening the door. At length, I took my wand and called, "Hagrid, we're coming in! Alohamora!"

Blue light shone from the door frame, and the door clicked open. Fang nearly tackled us with excitement, then he whined and led us to where Hagrid lay in bed under a pile of blankets. The pile shook with the violent sobs from the enormous man.

"Get out!" called Hagrid between sobs. "You don't want to be seen with a half giant! I already handed Dumbledore my resignation. You'll have a proper teacher from now on."

"Hagrid, you know we've never cared that you're half giant," said Hermione.

"You're our friend, Hagrid," said Harry. "Look what I've got for relatives. Look at the Dursleys."

"I don't know what kind of person your mother was," said Sloth, "but she probably wasn't worse than my father. You're you, and we all know you're a good person."

"Not everyone feels that way," said Hagrid, tears running down his cheeks.

"Almost no one likes me," said Luna without a trace of self-pity. As though she was simply stating a fact. "The people who do like you count more than the people who don't."

"You're not half giant," said Hagrid miserably.

"I'm not human either," I said, shifting to my black haired, pale skinned homunculus form. I put my face near Hagrid's so he could see my pointed teeth and my purple, slitted eyes. "In Amestris, homunculi are considered to be a product of the most taboo art. When I became a homunculus in order to heal an injury that wouldn't heal any other way, every friend I had turned against me, and more than one tried to kill me."

"They really did that?" asked Hagrid.

"I saw some of it," confirmed Sloth, who had taken her homunculus form as well.

"We're not going to turn against you, Hagrid," said Neville.

"You all really mean that?" asked Hagrid, sitting up and taking in all of us standing there.

"Of course we mean it, Hagrid," said Harry.

"Awe, you're right. You're all right. I been stupid. My old dad woulda been ashamed of the way I've been behaving," said Hagrid, resolutely wiping his tears. It took him a long moment before he regained his composure. Finally, he got up and retrieved a photograph.

"Never shown you a picture of my old dad, have I?" asked Hagrid. "Here. That was taken just after I got into Hogwarts. Dad was dead chuffed. Thought I might not be a wizard, see, 'cause me mum... well anyway. 'Course, I never was great shakes at magic, really, but at least he never saw me expelled. Died, see, in me second year.

"Dumbledore was the one who stuck up for me after Dad went. Got me the gamekeeper job. Trusts people, he does. Gives 'em second chances. That's what sets him apart from the other heads, see. He'll accept anyone at Hogwarts so long as they've got the talent. Knows people can turn out okay even if their families weren't, well, all that respectable. But some don't understand that. There's some who'd always hold it against you. There's some who'd even pretend they just had big bones rather than stand up and say, 'I am what I am, and I'm not ashamed.'

"'Never be ashamed,' my old dad used to say, 'there's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth bothering with.' And he was right. I've been an idiot. I'm not bothering with her no more, I promise you that. Big bones, I'll give her big bones."

"Your father was a wise man," I said, looking at the photo of a small man perched on the shoulder of an enormous eleven year old Hagrid.

"Look at you two," said Hagrid. "Hogwarts champions. You know what I'd love? I'd love one of you to win. I really would. It'd show 'em all, you don't have to be pureblood to do it. You don't have to be ashamed of what you are. It'd show 'em Dumbledore's the one who's got it right, letting anyone in as long as they can do magic. How you doing with those eggs?"

"Solved," said Harry, even as I inwardly winced at Hagrid's line about being able to do magic.

"That's my boy," beamed Hagrid. "You show 'em. Beat 'em all."

"You're going to tell Dumbledore you want to stay on, aren't you?" asked Hermione.

"Yeah,"said Hagrid. "I need to go talk to him."

"When you're back, can we keep on with the unicorns?" asked Luna.

* * *

Hagrid proved extremely knowledgeable about unicorns in our subsequent lessons, and he was doing better at ignoring the barns from Draco and his cronies as well as the hate mail that followed Rita Skeeter's article.

In the lead up to our next Hogsmeade weekend, we tried to get Professor McGonagall to lift Neville's ban, but she was adamant. We promised to bring him back some Honeydukes sweets and some stuff from Zonko's joke shop. He just reminded us to pick up the gilly weed.

In the Three Broomsticks, Ludo Bagman took Harry aside while the rest of us settled in at a table. Once Harry returned and reported Bagman had offered to help him solve the egg, we chatted a bit more. Apparently, Crouch hadn't recovered from whatever illness he'd contracted that made him miss the Yule Ball.

As we chatted, Rita Skeeter entered the room, talking to her camera man about digging up dirt on Ludo Bagman.

"Trying to ruin someone else's life?" yelled Harry angrily at her.

"Harry," said Rita, "how lovely. Why don't you come and join-"

"I wouldn't come near you with a ten foot broomstick," snapped Harry. "What did you have to do that to Hagrid for, eh?"

"Our readers have a right to the truth, Harry. I'm merely doing my-"

"Who cares if he's half giant?" yelled Harry, drawing looks from the entire bar. "There's nothing wrong with him!"

Rita Skeeter recovered her equilibrium quickly and pulled out her quill and parchment. "How about giving me an interview about the Hagrid you know, Harry? The man behind the muscles? Your unlikely friendship and the reasons behind it. Would you call him a father substitute?"

Hermione sprang to her feet and looked as though she was about to throw her butterbeer mug at Rita's head. I caught her arm before she did anything she'd regret. My eyes turned to Skeeter and I said, "What's the point of doing an interview if you're just going to make up both sides anyway like you did last time, you hack?"

I'd hit a nerve. Somehow, this worthless scandalmonger's soft spot was questioning her journalistic integrity. We all got up and left.

"She'll be after you next, Greed," said Ron in a worried voice.

"You know what," I said, "let her. It's like Hagrid said, I'm not ashamed of what I am. If I'm honest, I'm getting really sick of hiding anyway, so if she figures it out, good."

* * *

Rita Skeeter's article came out the day before the second task. The eight of us were seated outside around a copy of the Daily Prophet laughing at what she'd written about me.

"A goblin! She thinks I'm a goblin!" I laughed heartily.

"I love the part where you're hanging around me to learn my secrets," said Ron. "She couldn't have got that more wrong if she'd tried."

"Still," said Hermione seriously, "she turned up a lot of evidence. If I didn't know the truth, I'd wonder."

"I know anyone who bothered to look would realize Amestris isn't on any map in this world," said Sloth.

"Professor Flitwick probably isn't happy," noted Luna. "She's accusing him of helping you blend in on account of being part goblin himself."

"Goblins impersonating wizards and using wands is a big deal," noted Neville. "Someone int he Ministry of Magic's bound to look into it now this is published."

"They can look into all they want," I said. "I'm not a goblin, and any test they care to give will show that."

We clammed up as Fred and George Weasley approached. They glanced at the paper and smirked.

"Oh no, it's the goblin spy!" exclaimed Fred in mock horror.

"I say we beg for mercy, Fred," said George.

"What do you want?" asked Ron.

"McGonagall sent us," explained Fred. "We're supposed to take you, Hermione, and Sloth down to her office."

"What's she want?" asked Sloth.

"Didn't say," said George. "We're just the messengers."

"I'll see you at the second task tomorrow," said Sloth, waving goodbye.

* * *

I stayed up all night in the Ravenclaw common room thinking. The truth was, all this secrecy really was getting to me. There were people in the Ministry of Magic who could talk about my and Sloth's arrival in this world. Yes, Rita Skeeter's article was nonsense and speculation, but it would lead to questions. We'd originally hidden our nature and origins as part of the plan to protect the Philosopher's Stones. It was in service to that goal that the people who knew the truth were convinced to remain silent.

Now, not only were the Philosopher's Stones gone, but Petigrew had returned to Voldemort carrying the truth of our nature with him. Really, there was just no point hiding what we were or where we came from anymore. Well, there was one reason. Sloth was enjoying getting the high school experience Nina never lived long enough to have.

It was very clear by now that Albus Dumbledore had the power to make decisions about Hogwarts enrollment and employment. There were checks on his power in that regard, but clearly the majority of the decision making power laid with him. And he already knew Sloth and I were inhuman shape shifters from beyond the Gate. But did he know we were muggles?

Lupin had figured out something was strange about our powers, and it was unlikely Dumbledore hadn't gotten even a hint of that fact during our occlumency lessons. Ollivander's comments about my wand would've just been further confirmation. If Dumbledore did already know, would he be able to exert enough influence to keep me enrolled in Hogwarts if I came out? Would he be willing to do so?

I turned the problem over and over in my mind. In the end, it kept coming back to one point. The truth was going to come out sooner or later no matter what I did. If I got ahead of it, I could at least try to control the spin.

* * *

I arrived at the lake early. The stadium seating from the first task was set up there, and students were already trickling in. Dumbledore, Maxime, Karkaroff, and Bagman were already there. Percy was saving Barty Crouch's seat for him. I went up to the judges' table.

"Do you think it would be possible for me to say a few words before we start?" I asked.

"Quite the showman, aren't you," said Ludo Bagman happily. "That was quite a doozy you gave at the first task."

Percy gave me a disapproving look.

"It's just," I said, "after that Daily Prophet article, I wanted to set the record straight."

"Of course, of course," said Bagman. "Though if you want a bit of advice, I personally find addressing these sorts of rumors only lends them credibility."

I locked eyes with Professor Dumbledore, and brought what I intended to do as close to the surface of my thoughts as I could manage. I felt the probing of his legilimency. Then he said, "If you're sure about this, Marcus. Know that I shall do everything in my power to keep you at school should you still wish to continue at Hogwarts. You have been a model student, and it would diminish us to lose you."

"Thank you, Professor," I said. No objections were raised from the other judges. I turned and faced the crowd. Fleur and Viktor had arrived while I conversed with the judges.

"Ladies and gentlemen," I said. I didn't amplify my voice, but I did speak loudly enough to make myself heard. The crowd quieted and listened. "I have been graciously allowed to say a few words to address the recent Daily Prophet rumors that I am a goblin spy. Those rumors are false, based on speculation and poor journalism, but they do contain a grain of truth."

That led to some double takes in the audience and people listening more intently.

"I am not a wizard. While I was born human, the body I currently inhabit is an artificial construct called a homunculus. And while those of you who've had classes with me know I have powers, it isn't conventional magic, but a set of techniques from my homeland that any muggle could learn to do.

"As to my homeland, it really is called Amestris. The reason you won't find it on any map is because it is located in another world. Four years ago, arrived in this world through a portal inside the Ministry of Magic. At that time, I testified to members of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement under the effects of veritasyrum.

"I came to this world a peaceful explorer, and since arriving I have had the unparalleled privilege to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I have made so many friends and learned so much in my time here. It is my desire to continue learning with all of you, and I regret waiting so long before revealing the truth."

I'd adopted my pale skinned homunculus form about halfway through the speech. There was a general rumble of questioning noises building now that I'd finished speaking. Suddenly, Harry burst onto the scene at a dead run. He was panting and gasping for breath, but he gripped my shoulders.

"Ron..." gasped Harry. "... Ron and Hermione... I can't find them... They've been taken!"

Harry's eyes were wide and fearful, and suddenly the one part of the riddle I'd missed made sense. The same panicked expression on Harry's face was now mirrored in mine. I recalled the final lines of the song, "But past an hour, the prospect's black. Too late, it's gone, it won't come back."

I didn't wait for the announcement or the whistle. I bolted for the water. Bagman blew his whistle and tried to recall me, but I wasn't listening. I sprinted along the surface of the lake, supported by the transmutation circles on the soles of my shoes boosting the surface tension.

Bagman quickly sent the others off just as I leapt into the air and turned into a dolphin mid-leap, my wand clutched between my teeth. I swam as fast as my aquatic body could carry me, deep into the murky water. The water was dark, and even if I hadn't had my wand in my mouth, I had no practice with echolocation.

The original plan had been to use gillyweed, but once I realized the stakes, I couldn't waste the precious seconds it would take to kick in. Now I had a scant hour to search the lake for wherever Sloth and the others were being held. I rocketed through the water in an improvised search pattern, but the fact that I could only see maybe ten feet in any given direction meant I had little hope of searching the entire lake in the allotted time. I briefly thought of my time turner, which was locked in my trunk. If I'd known what they'd taken, I never would have left it behind. Still, if I stuck to systematic search pattern, I could retrieve the pendant afterward and continue the search within the same hour.

A long fingered hand reached out of a camouflaging cluster of seaweed and grabbed my tail. I'd swum into a nest of grindylows. We'd studied the creatures in last year's Defense Against the Dark Arts class with Professor Lupin. You could escape them by breaking their grip. Turning back and fighting them off would take time, though.

An alchemy array drew itself along my dolphin body, and I glowed blue when it activated. I'd studied grindylows. I knew the body composition of the water demons. In the light of my alchemy, all the grindylows broke down into a red mist, and I swam on.

I had no way of knowing how long I'd been, having neither a watch nor limbs with which to check one. My sensitive hearing picked up something familiar. It was faint, but it sounded like the same voices from the eggs. I turned toward the singing and launched myself like a living torpedo. As I got closer, I could make out words, and verify I was on the right track.

"You're time's half done, so tarry not,  
Lest what you seek stays here to rot."

Well,t hat answered the question of how long I had left. I poured on as much speed as I could, adjusting the array on my body to diminish the resistance the water offered. As a side effect, the array shed enough light to see where I was going.

The song was coming from a village of merpeople. They'd obviously been in the lake long before the Triwizard Tournament started. In the village square, a choir of mermaids were singing, their songs making it possible for us to find them. A group of mermen holding spears were guarding a statue. Tied to the statue, unconscious, were Sloth, Hermione, and a beautiful young girl with silvery blonde hair. From the way I felt a psychic intrusion attempting to enhance my opinion of her beauty, I connected the dots and identified her as a relative of Fleur's.

Harry was already there, and had managed to cut Ron loose. Now, he was attempting to argue with the merpeople. While the gillyweed gave him the ability to breathe, and webbed hands and feet to propel himself with, Harry still couldn't speak underwater.

I stopped on a dime as I transformed, adopting my black haired homunculus form. I was wearing black shorts, and the oroboros tattoo stood out prominently on my chest. I took my wand from between my pointed teeth and stared down the merpeople through purple, slitted eyes.

I slashed my wand in front of me, and words briefly blazed before me, made of trace phosphorous in the water. "WE ARE TAKING THE HOSTAGES."

One of the merpeople spoke, his voice easily audible under the water. "You take your own hostage. Leave the others."

I slashed my wand again, and new words appeared. "WE ARE TAKING THEM ALL. ANYONE WHO TRIES TO STOP US DIES."

Then, with a flick of my wand, a blue blade of alchemic light extended out from the end of my wand. A trail of bubbles followed it, as the deconstruction alchemy separated the water molecules into bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen gas. The merfolk wisely withdrew. I cut the others lose with a single motion, then holstered my wand. A strap around my thigh materialized to hold the wand.

Harry grabbed Ron and Hermione. I took Sloth and the unknown girl, and together, we headed for the surface. The merfolk ascended with us, keeping to a safe, nonthreatening distance, but also keeping us in sight. None of the hostages were moving. I could only hope they'd revive once we got them to the surface.

I had to retain human form so I'd have hands I could use to drag the hostages up. Harry had flippers still, but he wasn't going much faster than I was. The merfolk were swimming circles around us. We breached the surface together. As I'd hoped, the hostages revived from their enchanted sleep on being exposed to open air.

The younger girl was a weaker swimmer than the rest of us, and needed to be supported, lest her head sink below the ice cold water. Harry, meanwhile ahd to keep his head underwater until the gillyweed wore off and he could breathe normal air again. Ron was calling us idiots for grabbing all the hostages, insisting they'd never been in any real danger. He still helped us get everyone safely to shore.

Madam Pomfrey was waiting near the shore for us with heavy blankets and vials of potions to treat hypothermia after the time we'd all spent in the cold February water. As we reached the shore, the mermaids were escorting Fleur and Krum back to the surface. Viktor had transfigured his head into that of a shark, and Headmaster Karkaroff reversed it with his wand upon Viktor surfacing. Fleur looked injured. She was covered in cuts and scratches, and only stopped struggling with the merpeople escorting her when she sighted the girl we'd rescued being tended to by Madam Pomfrey. Steam was shooting out of the girl's ears from the pepper up potion Madam Pomfrey gave her to warm her up.

Percy had left his post at the judges' table to fuss over Ron, who tried to shake off his worried older brother. Fleur reached the shore and rushed to the girl.

"Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Is she alive? Is she hurt?"

"She's fine," gasped Harry, exhausted after an hour of hard swimming.

"It was the grindylows," said Fleur, clutching Gabrielle to her. "They attacked me. Oh, Gabrielle, I thought... I thought..."

"I thought the same thing," I said softly, planting a kiss on Sloth's forehead and hugging her tight.

"I'm okay, Greed," she said. Then she saw my face and asked with worry, "Greed, your eyes! What did you do?"

"I told them the truth about me," I said. I emphasized the last word. Her nature was for her to conceal or hide as she saw fit. "No one'll think I'm a goblin anymore." I gave a small smile.

The judges went to consult. Viktor Krum approached us and said, "I didn't make it to the village in time. I am so sorry, Hermione. If your friends hadn't rescued you against the rules, who knows what might have happened to you?"

Fleur was also grateful to us for rescuing her sister and kissed each of us on the cheek. The judges finished conferring amongst themselves and with the merpeople's representative. Ludo Bagman magically amplified his voice to announce the score.

Fleur was at the bottom of the rankings, having failed to reach the village, and needing to be rescued from the grindylows. Krum had the next score up, having reached the village but outside the hour time limit. My score was next. I would've got perfect marks like Harry did, but I was marked down for going before the whistle and for threatening the merpeople. The result was I was now tied with Harry in the overall ranking.

"The third and final task will take place at dusk on the twenty-fourth of June," finished Bagman. "The champions will be notified of what is coming precisely one month beforehand. Thank you all for your support of the champions."

Once he had muffled his voice again, I approached the judges' table and asked, "Wait, does this mean I'm still in the tournament after what I said?"

"Frankly," said Bagman, "even if you were a goblin, we couldn't kick you out of the tournament. Binding magical contract, remember? I expect someone from the Improper Use of Magic Office will be along to see you about that animagus transformation. I'll try to convince them to deffer your sentence in Azkaban until after the third task."

"That wasn't an animagus transformation," I said insistently. "Homunculi have shape shifting powers." I demonstrated by hopping up onto the judges' table and turning into a rabbit.

"Well," said Bagman, "in that case, let's make it someone from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures then. Good thing, too. With them, you might avoid a stay in Azkaban."

* * *

I fortunately didn't have to wait long for the question of my status to be resolved. Amos Diggory, who I'd met on the way to the World Cup, arrived at Hogwarts the next day. Professor Dumbledore joined me when I went to meet with him.

"Marcus, have a seat," said Mr. Diggory. "There are a few questions I need to ask, and things will go better for you if you answer truthfully."

I sat down across from him. I hadn't switched back to my human appearance since the task. If I was going to get damned and condemned again, I wanted to get that out of the way.

"Thank you," said Mr. Diggory. "Please set your wand on the table."

I complied. His eyes took in its unusual appearance. Then he turned back to look me in my purple, slitted eyes.

"All right, let's start with some basics. It is your claim that you are a formerly human being from another world and that Ministry of Magic personnel can confirm this?"

"They can confirm I explained all this under veritasyrum," I replied.

"Why have none of them come forward about this until now?" asked Diggory.

"I am afraid, I must claim responsibility for that," said Dumbledore. "I had asked for their discretion because I wished to enlist the aid of Mr. Oren in protecting the Philosopher's Stone before the deaths of my good friends the Flamels."

"After that, I just didn't want to have to leave Hogwarts," I said.

"Are you aware that carrying and use of a wand by a nonhuman creature is a violation of Ministry law?" asked Diggory.

"I didn't know that," I said, "but I've never used a wand. I can't."

"We'll see about that," said Diggory. "Did you know there is a way to learn the most recent spells a wand has cast? Prior Incantato!"

Shadowy traces of the test spells Ollivander had used to verify my new wand was in working order for the tournament were expelled from the wand one at a time in reverse order. Diggory eyed the results suspiciously.

"I hasten to point out," said Dumbledore, "that Ministry of Magic officials compelled Mr. Oren to carry that wand as part of his participation in the Triwizard Tournament. He can hardly be blamed for following the Ministry's orders."

"Yes... well...," said Diggory uncomfortably. "I don't believe there are currently any rules specific to... homunculi?"

I nodded.

"And if you were, as you claim, born human," said Diggory, "then this is probably more akin to the werewolf situation than what we have going with the goblins or the house elves. Which would mean you would be permitted to use a wand and attend Hogwarts with the Headmaster's permission.

"He has it," said Dumbledore simply. "After all, I was aware of his status when his application was accepted. In the time he has attended this school, I have never had cause to regret that decision."

Amos Diggory got up to leave, then said, "Confidentially, Marcus, I don't think you did yourself any favors coming out with all this. You may find people treat you differently now."

"I knew that was a risk," I said, "but thank you."

When he had gone, Dumbledore turned to me and said, "If I recall correctly, Amos is rather fond of pepper imps. I am certain a box or two would be appreciated when you send out your thank you notes."

"I'll remember that," I said. "Thank you too, Professor."

"It was the least I could do after all your hard work to make the visions from the Mirror of Erised come true. I always look forward to your Christmas gift. One can never have too many pairs of good wool socks."

"Still no way to give Harry his wish," I said, reflecting on the one vision I hadn't been able to make happen, besides my own. "Although, now that you mention it, I have been reading up on something that might make that possible. Tell me, Professor, is your wand what I think it is?"

"It it was," said Dumbledore meaningfully, "it would not be wise to boast about it."

"And should Harry be equally careful boasting about his father's cloak?" I asked.

"He should at that," said Dumbledore. "As to the third of the set, I have never heard a credible rumor of its location or even confirmation of its existence. As I understand it, homunculi do not properly age, but I would still advise against wasting your life in pursuit of something that may not even exist."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Hagrid's exposure by the Daily Prophet was too good a parallel to waste, especially after what Greed went through when he first became a homunculus.


	31. Chapter 41: The Final Task

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 41) The Final Task  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

In the days that followed, teachers and students reacted in different ways. Professor Flitwick went out of his way to be openly friendly with me in classes to demonstrate I was still a welcomed and valued member of his house. McGonagall pointedly ignored the situation and acted as though nothing had changed. Professor Trelawney was beside herself when I turned in updated astrology charts based on the starts I was actually born under back in my own world.

I hadn't expected the near universal acceptance and support from the teachers. After the response I'd gotten back home, it moved me to tears. It was easy to forget, but this world had different values, priorities, and taboos.

The student body's reactions were mixed. some, including the Weasley twins, were mostly supportive as well, if a bit curious. A lot of the students that had never liked me latched on to my nonhuman status as an excuse to resume teasing and ostracizing a school champion. I honestly felt better having them openly antagonistic toward me again anyway.

Snubbing the Daily Prophet, I gave an interview to Luna's father over the mail for the Quibbler, explaining a bit about homunculi, including our origins as products of alchemy, our ability to regenerate injuries, and the difficulty involved in learning how to shape shift. Obviously, I left out both the full extent of our immortality, and our weaknesses, but he seemed to be quite happy just to be the first to publish the details.

The most amazing thing of all was that it blew over. In a couple of weeks, people were talking about new rumors, and my newly revealed status was just another accepted fact. Having seen the reaction I got, Sloth revealed herself as a homunculus as well. By that point, everyone's positions on the subject had been pretty well settled. I certainly didn't begrudge her waiting to see the reaction to me before coming out herself.

Word came in from Sirius about our next Hogsmeade weekend. He wanted to meet up. He also wanted us to bring food. This being an important matter, we managed to convince Neville to sneak out with us under his invisibility cloak. We stopped off at the kitchens to get some extra food from the house elves, and loaded it into my magic bag.

Rather than head straight to the meeting point, we wandered about Hogsmeade, browsing the shops. At Borgin and Burkes, I purchased some dark detectors. When I took possession of the foeglass, the shopkeeper started and issued a warning.

"Your enemies are reflected in a foeglass. When they're unidentifiable shadows in the distance, you're safe. When they loom large and clear, they're nearby and ready to attack. At this level of clarity, whoever it is that means you harm is well past the point of plotting and is lying in wait for an opportune moment. Be careful."

Three figures were visible in my foeglass. On the left side of the enchanted mirror, I recognized Peter Petigrew's features. On the right side, was a blonde man I didn't recognize. In the center, with his slitted nostrils and red eyes was the face of Lord Voldemort, who I'd firsts seen on the back of Quirrell's head. A couple of unidentifiable figures lurked in the shadows far in the back.

I stowed the foeglass and our crew headed out down the lane where Sirius said he'd meet us. We found the large black dog waiting near a bit of fence. After greeting him, he led us into the hills and up to the foot of a nearby mountain. Neville had removed his invisibility cloak a half hour into the long hike. Finally, Sirius led us inside a hidden cave and turned human again.

After bowing to Buckbeak, who was tied up inside, we started unpacking the food while he and Harry spoke. Sirius wanted to go over everything potentially suspicious that had happened this year going back to the Quidditch World Cup. He had a good deal of insight and additional information to offer, which he shared as he ate ravenously.

Among other things, Sirius mentioned that Barty Crouch had been the head of Magical Law Enforcement during the last war. He'd authorized all manner of gross violations in the lame of stopping Voldemort. Many people, including Sirius, had been sent directly to Azkaban without a trial. I was reminded unpleasantly of the way the military had tried to cover up what Shao Tucker had done by avoiding a trial.

As Sirius had a lot of experience with the who's who of dark wizards thanks to his time in Azkaban, I took out my new foeglass to show it to him.

"Do you recognize this man?" I asked, pointing to the unfamiliar blonde man in the mirror.

"That's not possible," said Sirius. Then he screamed out, "Does no one on the dark side stay dead?!"

"Sirius?" asked Harry, worried.

Sirius calmed himself, clearly putting in an effort for Harry's sake. "I'm sorry about that. It's just... all three of them are supposed to be dead. Wormtail and Voldemort you know about already. The third man is Barty Crouch Jr. But he died in Azkaban. I watched the dementors bury him."

Sirius proceeded to ramble, giving everything he knew about Crouch Jr. in the hopes something would make sense or prove useful. He'd been caught after Voldemort's defeat, as part of a group of ex death eaters determined to bring Voldemort back to life. The trial Crouch gave him was a show trial as part of publicly denouncing the boy. He'd taken ill in Azkaban, not uncommon, and his parents had made a deathbed visit. His mother had also been ill and died shortly after Crouch had.

"Dementors are blind, aren't they?" asked Luna. "Maybe they let Barty Jr. go and kept his mother by mistake."

Sirius shook his head. "People, humans, would've seen who was leaving, and I saw the body the dementors buried. It was him."

"We know magic can change someone's appearance," I said. "However it happened, he's alive and after me. Probably Harry too." I tossed the foeglass to Harry, and when the three figures at the front didn't change, I said, "Yep, definitely after Harry too."

"You're right," said Sirius. "However it happened, it happened. This has to tie in with Crouch Sr.'s illness."

"Maybe Winky would know more," suggested Sloth.

"Who?" asked Sirius.

"Mr. Crouch's house elf," said Hermione. "He sacked her at the world cup after she was found under the dark mark with Harry's wand."

Speculation continued for a while longer. Ultimately, it was decided Hermione and Sloth would talk to Winky, Ron and Ginny would write to Percy, asking after Barty Crouch Sr.'s health, Harry would check over the Marauder's Map for any sign of the people itn eh mirror, and all of us would keep a look out for anything suspicious. Sirius insisted we refer to him by the code name Snuffles from that point on when we were apart, and warned us not to try sneaking out of the castle to see him.

* * *

When we met up in the Chamber of Secrets, Harry was the only one with anything significant to report. The owl to Percy would take time, and Winky was adamant in her protection of her former master's secrets. Harry, however, had confirmed that Barty Crouch was on the school grounds. Before speaking with us, he'd gone to speak to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore had heard him out, and noted that he'd been in contact with Sirius, who had also passed on our insight from the foeglass. Dumbledore had called in Moody to discuss the new information. Harry and Dumbledore both held back. Dumbledore didn't say anything about Sirius to Moody, and Harry didn't say anything about the map to either of them.

We had to clam up at that point because Sir Nicholas had arrived. Harry and I idly mused about the possibility that the third task might involve sword fighting, and the advantage that would give us if it did. It was almost like there wasn't a trio of dark wizards plotting to kill us.

When we left Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, we were startled to see Mad-Eye Moody waiting outside in the hall, leaning against the threatening message Riddle's diary had forced Ginny to paint in her first year. His magical eye darted this way and that, but his human one was fixed on the door.

"I need to talk to you, Oren," he said.

"How did you-?" started Ron.

"You sneak up here every day," noted Moody. "If you don't vary your routine, it makes you easy to track, even if where you're going is perfectly hidden."

"Good point," I admitted. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"It's about your bolt hole," he said.

"Your what?" asked Ginny.

"The lab under the Quidditch field," said Sloth, still visibly uncomfortable with Moody's discovery of it at the start of the year.

Picking up on the cue, Moody explained, "I did a fresh sweep of the grounds after getting some new information from Dumbledore this morning." He gave a nod to Harry. "I checked out your lab, and it looks like you've been robbed."

"Robbed?" I asked.

"Unless you got paranoid about me having been down there and you decided to replace a year's supply of polyjuice with water after we talked? I figured if it was you, you'd have just left the bottles empty instead of trying to hide that some was missing. Who else knew about your lab?"

"Just us," I said, gesturing at everyone collected in the hall. "We kept pretty quiet about it."

"That's not true," said Ron. "We had a spy in our midst for three years. Wormtail knew."

"And he could have told Voldemort and Crouch," said Harry.

Moody nodded. "That makes this trickier. This eye can see through invisibility, but it's no help identifying someone who's under polyjuice. He could've been under our noses all year and we'd never have known it. The only people he couldn't be are Hagrid and Maxime, and you two of course," he added, gesturing at me and Sloth.

"Why not us?" asked Sloth.

"Only works on humans," said Moody. "Other kinds of creatures, even a little bit of nonhuman in their ancestry, and the potion doesn't work right. Has strange, unpredictable effects, but it definitely doesn't work right."

"So, Fleur's safe too," said Harry.

"Gabrielle, too," I added.

"Point is, most of the teachers and students are fair game," said Moody. "And that's not getting into any willing accomplices and Imperiused servants he might be using. Mind you, if we could catch Crouch, we could interrogate him and find out who he was working with."

"I might have a way to find him," Harry said. He took the blank parchment that was the Marauder's Map out of his bag, tapped his wand to it and said, "I solemnly swear, I am up to no good."

Moody took the map and stared at it intently as it drew in the many floors, corridors, and secret passages of Hogwarts. Both his eyes darted over the map as he quickly determined what he was looking at.

"These dots with the names on them are all the people in the school?" he asked. Harry confirmed with a nod. "Interesting. Very interesting. We would be here, which means if this works the way you say it does, we're all who we appear to be. It'll take longer to go over the whole school. Can I borrow this?"

"If it helps you catch Crouch and stop whatever Wormtail and Voldemort are planning, yeah," said Harry.

"Good," said Moody, folding the map and putting it in a pocket of his robes. "In the meantime, watch out for each other. Constant vigilance. Hopefully, I can sound the all clear and return your map soon, Potter."

"Until that happens," I said, "I want everyone to stay armed at all times."

We nodded and went our separate ways.

* * *

Percy's letter the following week provided no new insights. Crouch Sr. hadn't been in to work, but he was sending in orders via owl post. Percy'd apparently had to field a lot of questions about Crouch Sr.'s condition.

In the meantime, we learned that the third task would involve navigating a hedge maze prepared with spells and creatures in order to reach the Triwizard cup at the center. Once someone had the cup, that was the end of this accursed binding magical contract. To prepare for the task, I looked down on the Quidditch field from Ravenclaw tower and sketched an overhead map of the maze that was being grown there.

Ron's alchemy training was nearing its completion for the year, and I started feeling out some of the castle's ghosts about the possibility of them coming back to life. I avoided being explicit about anything, since the risks and sacrifices involved with a human transmutation attempt were such that I certainly wouldn't begrudge Ron deciding not to go through with it.

Harry and I were exempted from end of year exams, so we used the extra time to prepare for the third task. We still had to keep up with our regular schoolwork, but the cram sessions in preparation for the test were free time to practice combat spells, shields, curses, countercurses, and the like. The others took shifts helping us practice, so they'd still have a chance to study themselves.

In the buildup to the third task, Harry dozed off in Divination, and had another dream or vision about Voldemort, which he reported to Dumbledore. Apparently, Wormtail had screwed something up, but the problem had been corrected. Someone was dead, and their plan was back on track. Meanwhile, the figures in my foeglass crept imperceptibly closer each day.

Finally, the day of the final task arrived. I sat down to breakfast with Luna at the Ravenclaw table. Someone slid a copy of the Daily Prophet over to us, saying, "You'd better see this."

The headline bore the title, "Harry Potter and the Seven Deadly Sins." It was another hit piece by Rita Skeeter, this one aimed straight at Harry. She painted Harry as a burgeoning dark lord, who's brain had been addled by the long ago curse from Voldemort that had given him his lightning bolt scar. As evidence, she cited Harry's friendships with Giants and Werewolves, his recent collapse in Divination that she had no legitimate way of knowing about, and most especially, his close friendship with us.

It wasn't just Sloth and I. The others had been assigned sins by Rita Skeeter. Ron had been dubbed Gluttony due to his eating habits, which he'd picked up as a member of a very large, very poor family. Hermione was apparently Lust, having supposedly been dosing people, including Ron and Harry, with love potions so she could leach off their fame and wealth. Ginny was called Wrath over her now quite well known hexing of Cho Chang. Neville was stuck with Envy, which Skeeter claiming was claiming was due to his poor magical skills and his inability to live up to his parents' legacy. Which left Luna as Pride, for keeping her head held high and cleaving to her beliefs in the face of the mass ridicule of both them and her.

Rita Skeeter had learned that we used parseltongue among ourselves, and used this as further evidence that we were all being trained in the dark arts by Harry to serve as his lieutenants, and his answer to Voldemort's inner circle of Death Eaters. She concluded her article with a call to have us all investigated and perhaps removed from the school.

I turned to Luna and said, "You got Pride. That's high praise. Traditionally, it was used to designate hte strongest, highest ranking homunculus."

A quick glance over toward the Gryffindor table showed that Hermione was particularly affronted at her characterization in the article. After breakfast, Harry and I were surprised to be called off to a side room with the explanation that our families were allowed to watch the final task, and that we were to greet them.

I was an orphan, raised by the church of Leto since long before Cornello arrived in Liore as our Prophet. I'd never known my parents or any blood relation. Certainly if I had any, they'd be back in my own world. Had our time in this world run out and the Elrics had come to rescue us? I had hoped the time turner would allow us to avoid that eventuality.

As it turned out, it was Bill and Molly Weasley who had come to see both Harry and I. Arthur, Charlie, and Percy couldn't get the time off. Apparently, Percy wouldn't be here as a judge either. Fudge was going to do the job personally. Not that there would be much to judge as straightforward as the third task was.

The Weasleys had taken the reveal of my nonhuman nature well enough. I answered a few questions, but they took care not to be intrusive. At length, the time came, and I headed down to the hedge maze with Harry, Viktor, and Fleur. We all shook hands and wished each other luck.

* * *

Harry was dispatched into the maze first. His head start was relatively slim, and soon, I'd been signaled to go after him. I'd memorized the paths that led to the center of the maze, and I was off at a run on my chosen one.

Rounding a corner, I found myself face to face with a chimera. It bore a striking resemblance to the creature Father Cornello had kept in the church basement as a security measure, with its lion head and reptilian tail. This one was considerably smaller than that one had been. I wasn't convinced it outweighed Loki in his chimera form.

I ducked a swipe from its clawed fore paw and bolted past it. Not content to let me get by, it pounced toward me. I raised my wand and turned, pointing the wand at its belly. A burst of blue light accompanied a jet of transmuted air impacting it hard enough to reverse its momentum and throw it backward, crashing to the ground on its back and out of breath. I'd resumed running before it landed.

A few turns later, I was running down a straight section of my chosen route when I noticed the hedge getting darker, my footfalls quieter, and my limbs growing number with every step I took. I planted my feet and stopped instantly. I cautiously took a step back, and the deadening of my senses lessened. A step forward and it increased. I did some quick calculations. Assuming the rate of change remained constant, I would be completely insensate once I reached the halfway point of this stretch of maze.

If my senses returned after I crossed the halfway point, I could just run straight through. If they didn't, though, that would be it until one of the safety monitors found me and pulled me out. I could try to circle around, but the route I'd planned was the fastest, most direct one.

I stomped my foot and a wave of blue light shot up and down the ground, breaking down grass and soil for the raw materials to construct a slightly elevated rubber treadmill running the length of this path. Electricity didn't work on Hogwarts grounds, but all I needed was to keep a cylinder rotating. An appropriate transmutation circle was drawn on the cylinder on m end of the path. I took a red stone from my pocket and placed it in the cylinder, and the treadmill began to move in my direction.

I hopped on the treadmill and ran. IF my senses didn't return after the halfway point, I'd fall over and the treadmill would carry me back to the point I could see again and I'd take another route. If they did return, I could just keep running and hop off the treadmill on the far end. I had a brief moment of panic as I crossed the midpoint and blacked out for just an instant, but my momentum carried me through and my senses returned. I was still on track.

The next corner I took too fast and ended up sprinting into the middle of a nest of flesh eating slugs. Their acidic mucus burned through my boots in seconds. I pointed my wand down and deconstructed the slugs at my feet, then turned and did the same to the rest of the area. Even Hagrid didn't like flesh eating slugs. Once the area was clear, I focused and generated a new pair of boots before proceeding.

I heard a scream from somewhere nearby. It was Fleur's voice. She may have been feigning, but if she really was in danger, I didn't dare risk ignoring it. I deviated from my planned route and found Fleur unconscious, with no sign of what had attacked her nearby. I verified she was still breathing, then shot a burst of red sparks into the air with my wand to alert the safety patrol to rescue her. Then I found my way back to my path and resumed my run.

Ten feet further, I saw a blast ended skrewt turning a corner. The thing was even bigger than the skrewts had been when we last saw them in Care of Magical Creatures. It was the size of a small car, with a gleaming armored exoskeleton and a stinger as thick around as my entire body. It turned in my direction and launched itself toward me with its organic rocket propulsion.

I held up my left arm and used a circle on my wrist to raise a shield of transmuted air for the skrewt to collide with. It wasn't even stunned by the impact. I extended a blue blade of deconstruction alchemy from the end of my wand and sliced through one of the skrewt's legs. My shield had to block the stinger from coming down on my bead. I took advantage of the opening and quickly lobbed the stinger off.

The skrewt was preparing for another rocket propelled charge. I dropped flat on my back and extended my blade above me. The two halves of the skrewt collapsed on either side of me. I made sure no part of the thing was still moving, then I resumed my path.

It wasn't long after that point htat some darts shot out from the hedge on my left. I managed to duck in time and fell prone to the ground. Looking where they'd come from, a dozen green impish creatures were hidden in the thorns holding blowguns to their lips. I clapped and touched the ground. Earthen hands reached up and grasped them, pinning their arms and holding them off the ground. I picked up my dropped wand and proceeded.

After the next turn, I stopped in time to avoid rushing headlong into a gold colored mist that filled the path. I had no idea what it was, but odds were, contact with it would be bad. I crouched down and the ground compressed and cratered beneath my feet. Then, I used the circles on my shoes to restore the ground at the same time I took a leap forward. I hurled through the air above the maze for just a moment before using a similar transmutation to ensure a safe landing on the far side of the mist.

I was making good time, despite the obstacles. As I made my way down a straight section of maze, Viktor Krum stepped in front of me from a side path. He looked over at me.

"Viktor," I said, "I guess that head start wasn't that decisive. You must not've run into as many obstacles as I have. Oh well, it's anyone's game now."

In response, he raised his wand and said, "Crucio!"

In my life, I have experienced pain before. I'd even taken to keeping a ranked list of my top most painful experiences. Being subjected to the cruciatus curse easily knocked having been vivisected by the Nazis off the number three spot. Having each of my nerves individually hooked up to automail during the installation still managed to hold on to the number two spot, but it was a lot closer than I would have liked.

I wasn't sure how long I was writing on the ground, screaming in agony. A friendly voice reached my ears, calling, "Stupefy!" and the pain abruptly ended. Harry was standing over me, and he pulled me to my feet.

"Are you alright?" asked Harry.

"I've been worse," I replied unhappily. "Thank you. Who knows how much longer he would've kept that up if you hadn't stunned him?"

"He didn't sleep on the grounds," said Harry. "He slept on the ship where the map wouldn't have shown."

"I guess his beef with the Hallows symbol was really because he thought I was supporting the wrong dark lord," I said.

I snatched his wand and transmuted some earthen bindings to hold him immobile on the ground. I turned to proceed, and Harry stopped me.

"We should send up red sparks," said Harry. "Someone'll come and collect him. Otherwise, he'll probably be eaten by a skrewt."

I nodded. "Okay." Then I transmuted a message into the stone restraining him. Raised letters declaring he was the Death Eater Barty Crouch under polyjuice. While I left the note, Harry sent up the sparks.

"Looks like Hogwarts is winning the tournament," I said. "Do you think the real Viktor Krum is in trouble from that binding magical contract?"

"I hope not," said Harry.

"If he is dead from it, that's one more on the list of Crouch's crimes," I said. I glared at the unconscious Death Eater, then moved on. Harry did likewise along a different path.

The path Harry took would also get him to the center of the maze, so I had to keep moving if I was going to beat him to it. A couple minutes later, I approached an intersection with paths leading left, right, and forward. As soon as I stepped into the intersection, everything around me spun on its axis too fast for the eye to follow. The stars above me were stretched into concentric rings of light overhead. Then the spinning stopped.

I'd had no sense of motion, but I was now unsure if the direction I had been intending to go in was still where I'd last seen it. I looked as far down each path as I could see. I knew that the path I wanted to take had a T intersection next. Unfortunately, there were two, directly opposite each other. The other paths both curved to the left, meaning they were no help eliminating wrong paths.

I'd been studying the stars and planets for four years, and with astrology this year, I'd been getting a double dose this year. After a moment staring up, I was able to orient myself by the stars and proceed on my way.

I was starting to think the fastest, most direct path must have the most obstacles put in the way, when I rounded a corner and caught sight of a massive rhinocerus-like creature. I recognized it as an erumpent. I knew from my Care of Magical Creatures textbook that the creature's horn contained a fluid that caused anything it gored with it to explode. It lowered its head and charged at me.

I was in no mood ot explode today, so I raised my foot, intending to drop it into a pit. I remembered just in time that, as close to the center of the maze ass I was, I'd be dropping it into my lab, filled with toxic, fuming red water. I stopped myself, but there was no time to come up with a new plan. My hesitation got me impaled through the abdomen on that deadly horn.

I expected that the explosive injected into me would work like having a stick of dynamite shoved inside my body and detonated, blowing me apart from the inside out. Surprisingly, the explosion seemed to occur all around me instead. As a result, my skin was burned, my ribs were cracked, and I had a hole in m stomach from the initial goring, but I was still whole and alive even before my body's regeneration kicked in.

While I healed, I pointed my wand at the hedge. Vines shot out and entangled the erumpent, then they turned black as I manipulated the carbon on them to diamond hardness. So bound, the erumpent was no longer a danger to itself or others. I moved on.

The next obstacle I faced in my effort to reach the cup was a spelled stretch of maze. Every step I took down it caused the path's length to increase by two steps. Adjusting the length of my stride didn't help, and whole stepping backward did shrink the path back down, there wasn't enough space behind me to reduce it to nothing. I stood there longer than I should have trying to figure out how to get past this obstacle. Ultimately, I had to admit defeat and find another route.

The answer was probably to shrink the space in front of me as it expanded. A NEWT level charm, and nothing I could emulate with alchemy. Circling around, I finally caught sight of the Triwizard Cup. Harry was emerging from another path. I was faster and had better traction, but of course, one final obstacle emerged.

A gigantic spider pounced at me from the side as Harry called out a warning. My first impulse was to deconstruct it before it landed, but I recalled acromantula were sentient beings so I dropped into a roll. A burst of red light impacted the spider as Harry called out, "Stupefy!"

I rolled back to my feet and resumed my run for the cup, then turned back when I heard a scream. The spider had bit Harry's leg. It had apparently endured Harry's stun spell and ended up merely enraged at the young wizard who attacked it. Venom dripped from the spider's fangs. The black substance mingled with blood from Harry's wounded leg.

I stomped my foot and a stone spike rose up and impaled the spider. If it was going to play for keeps, so would I. I ran up to Harry as the spider twitched and died on my transmuted spike.

"Swallow this," I told him as I pressed a beozar into his hand. Meanwhile, I pointed my wand at his leg and closed the wound with alchemy.

"Go take the cup," said Harry as I got him to his feet. "We both know you're faster than I am, even after you fixed my leg."

"It doesn't seem right that the tournament's outcome comes down to a foot race," I said. Then I gave a wry grin and said, "Besides, you could stun me as soon as I turn my back."

"You could do the same to me if I went for it," said Harry, returning my grin. "Together, then?"

We strode side by side to the Triwizard cup, and each took hold of an opposite handle simultaneously. Suddenly, my hand was stuck, and I was spinning at a high rate of speed. The cup was a portkey.

* * *

Author's comments:  
The ability to recognize that Barty Crouch Jr. is involved doesn't translate to the ability to do anything to stop his plans.


	32. Chapter 42: Raising the Dead

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 42) Raising the Dead  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Harry and I landed heavily in a dark graveyard. A bundle of black robes rested on a tombstone nearby and squirmed as though an infant was swaddled in them. Suddenly, I was surrounded by the golden light of a transmutation circle. When I doubled over and began to vomit, I knew this was a flamel array.

Harry screamed in agony nearby as I tried to focus. A familiar rat was perched on one line of the glowing circle. He would have been as good as invisible before he'd been outlined by the transmutation's light. As red stones were expelled from my mouth and melted into a useless slurry, I could feel myself getting weaker. The stones I had consumed granted me superhuman strength and speed, fueled my ability to regenerate, and I was pretty confident served as the energy source for my shape shifting abilities. Without those stones, I was weak and vulnerable.

There was no way out of a flamel array. I couldn't drag myself outside its range, and I couldn't hold back the flow of red stones escaping my mouth. Harry was in no condition to help me. He was holding his forehead and screaming, rolling on the ground. The Philosopher's Stone's power left me, and the array went dark.

Wormtail resumed human form and stepped behind me while I lay on my hands and knees, trying to catch my breath. I didn't know what he was planning, but if it required draining away my spare life energy, I had a way to thwart it. I raised my wand to my lips and bit off the red stone on the end, just as something heavy fell on me from behind and pinned me to the ground.

I saw an automail leg fall over my shoulder and realized too late that it wasn't just the weight that prevented me from moving. They'd drained away my red stones and dumped a boggart on top of me. The boggart had turned into my human remains, and I was paralyzed on contact.

"Adava Kedavra!" called Wormtail, and I was struck by a burst of green light.

There wasn't much power in the red stone from my wand. The plant derived stones were, pound for pound, the weakest form of red stone, and I'd used up a lot of power healing Harry's leg earlier. Fortunately, the Adava Kedavra curse leaves the body in perfect condition. There was no flesh that needed to be rebuilt, just a spark of life to restore my functioning. As sore as I was all over, I doubted I had enough energy to do that again, and in the presence of my remains, if I died without any stones in me, that would be it.

Wormtail had moved Harry to another grave and tied him to it. Meanwhile, he was lighting a fire under a massive stone cauldron. I tried to move, but found myself still paralyzed. The boggart was still on top of me.

I needed to think through my next move carefully. Wormtail assumed I was dead. I could use occlumency to force the boggart to assume a different form, but the moment I did so, I'd be revealing myself to be still alive. With my powers so weakened, I'd need the element of surprise, and boggarts make a loud cracking sound when they change shape.

I took a mental inventory of my possessions. Just as with the first two tasks, I'd left my time turner locked up in my trunk in my dorm. I still had a soul coin on me, and there was a small chip of red stone on the back of it. It wouldn't do much, but it would fuel one transmutation I wouldn't have to move for. My shoes still had their transmutation circles on them, and my wand, minus red stone, was still clutched in my hand. The shield array I'd used against the skrewt was still drawn on my left wrist.

I could make a fight of it, but one unblockable killing curse, and it was all over. I wouldn't be able to keep up my occlumency while I was dead, so the boggart would revert to my remains, rendering that death permanent. Harry, for his part seemed to have recovered from whatever they were doing to him. He'd be looking for a way out too.

Harry saw an oportunity. Shifting into his raven form, the ropes that held him tight as a human fell away from his smaller bird body. Now in the air, Harry gained some altitude. If he could escape, I could keep playing possum until they left, then slip away myself.

Escape, however, was not what was on Harry's mind. Turning in midair, Harry dove straight at the bundle and returned to human form mid-dive. He had the soul coin I'd given him extended out in a hand. He pressed the coin to the creature inside the bundle before Wormtail could turn and stop him.

No red alchemic light poured from the back fo the coin on contact. Something had gone wrong. A laugh came from the bundle as Wormtail hastened to rebind Harry and keep a wand trained on him.

"Ah yes, the gift from your dead friend," came the voice of Lord Voldemort from the bundle. "Your last, desperate move has failed. Don't let him slip away as a bird again, Wormtail."

"Not so dead," I called out, followed by the loud cracking sound of the boggart on top of me transforming into a javelin. I was no longer paralyzed, but I was weak, sore, and sluggish. I couldn't have hit Wormtail through the heart if I'd tried, but fortunately, I didn't need to.

I sprang to my feet as fast as I could and hurled the javelin in Wormtail's direction. As it closed in on his position, another loud crack sounded and the boggart changed in midair from a javelin into Sirius Black.

His hollow eyes fixed on Wormtail, and a smile played on his lips. "Hello, Wormtail," said Black. "I've been hoping I'd run into you."

With the boggart distracting Wormtail, I called out to Harry, "Run! Get to safety! Leave them to me!"

Harry looked about to comply, but then he let out a fresh scream of agony as Voldemort declared, "I think not."

With no one focusing on me, I stomped my foot, and a section of earth flipped up beneath the dropped soul coin Harry had tried to use on Voldemort. I dropped my wand and pulled my soul coin from my pocket with one hand and caught Harry's with the other. Using my thumbs, I popped the red stone chips on the backs of each coin off and flicked the red stone fragments into my mouth. A little of the soreness vanished as some of my still dead muscles regenerated.

Meanwhile, Wormtail got over his shock at seeing Sirius and called out, "Rediculus!" The boggart turned into a rock at his feet. Then he called out a curse at me.

I raised my left arm and used the circle on my wrist to bring up a glowing blue disk of solidified air to block Wormtail's curse. I raised my right foot, preparing to stomp and drive a stone spike up through my opponent's body. Before my foot could fall, however, I was struck from behind. A massive snake sprang at me and wrapped itself around my body. I toppled to the ground.

I struggled against the snake, but my body was too weak. I hissed for it to let me go in parseltongue, but it didn't respond. My feet weren't in contact with teh ground, and I couldn't get my hands together to clap. I tried shape shifting a new circle onto my body, but apparently that technique ran on the same fuel of red stones as my regeneration, which was all used up.

"Hold him there, Nagini," said Voldemort in parseltongue. The serpent acknowledged it's master's command and tightened its constricting coils. Meanwhile, sparks and steam were flying out of the massive cauldron.

"It is ready, Master," said Wormtail.

"Now," instructed Voldemort.

Wormtail lifted Voldemort out of the swaddling bundle of robes, and I got my first good look at his new body. My first thought was that the bastard had possessed an infant. Something was wrong with that theory, though, primarily the fact that it only had one face. His limbs were emaciated to the point of being almost skeletal, and his skin was thin and raw, with sores in numerous places. I briefly wondered if Wrath had looked anything like that after his initial transmutation. Whatever the case, that body looked like it would be constant agony to exist like that.

Wormtail lowered the deformed, fetal dark lord into the cauldron, which hissed and bubbled when he was set inside. I racked my brain, trying to figure a way out of this situation, but being crushed by a giant snake is not a situation conductive to thinking your way out of. I briefly lamented that I never would've been snuck up on if I had a magic eye like Moody's, but I forced myself to focus on the present.

"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!" said Wormtail. Then, with a flick of his wand, a grave marked Tom Riddle cracked open and a faint dust of decayed bone floated from the grave to the cauldron. The sparks flying from the potion turned bright blue.

"Flesh of the servant," Wormtail continued, drawing a silver knife and sobbing, "willingly given, you will revive your master." He cut off his hand with the missing finger and allowed it to drop into the cauldron. The sparks blazed red as Wormtail screamed out in pain. Harry'd closed his eyes for that part. Still moaning in agony, Wormtail limped over to Harry.

I tried again to struggle. Nagaini ws no constricting me so tightly, I couldn't breathe enough to call out in warning. I could feel the soul coins digging into my palms. I couldn't even open my fists to drop them.

"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe," declared Wormtail through agonized sobs. He took his knife and cut a gash into Harry's right arm, and fumbled for a vial in his robes using his one remaining hand. He collected some of Harry's blood and poured it into the cauldron.

Steam filled the graveyard as the entire contents of the cauldron evaporated all at once. As the mist cleared, I saw a tall, thin figure rise out of the cauldron.

"Robe me," commanded Voldemort, and Wormtail, still cradling his stump of an arm carried over the bundle of robes and pulled them onto his master.

Voldemort's skin was pale, his eyes were red and slitted, and he still didn't have a proper nose, only slitted nostrils. He was hairless, and possessed very long fingers. Voldemort drew a wand from an inside pocket of his robes, fondled it for a moment, then used it to lift Wormtail off hsi feet and slam him into the gravestone Harry was tied to. He laughed, exulted to have his body and powers fully restored to him.

Voices were low, and I couldn't make out what was being said at this distance. I could tell he was enjoying Wormtail's suffering. He grabbed Wormtail's good arm, then began pacing.

I tried to think. If I did get loose from the snake, I'd have to fight Voldemort. His structure and composition were questionable. He certainly didn't look entirely human. Harry had struck him with a soul coin, and it did nothing. Why? I knew they could extract wizard souls. I'd used one on Lockheart. Wormtail didn't know enough alchemy to prepare a countermeasure. The only thing that made sense was that Voldemort had done something to alter his soul that prevented direct alchemy the same way his altered body did.

As I pondered, the black robed, masked Death Eaters apparated into the graveyard and formed a large circle around Harry, Wormtail, and Voldemort. They each dropped to their knees and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes, then resumed their place in the circle.

Voldemort commanded their attention with a whisper. I could feel the rising tension until one of them threw himself at Voldemort's feet, begging for forgiveness. Voldemort pointed his wand and subjected this Death Eater to the cruciatus curse before pacing over to Wormtail.

He begged incoherently. Voldemort raised his wand and conjured a mass of liquefied silver, which formed into the shape of a hand and affixed itself to Wormtail's bloody wrist. The pain seemed to vanish instantly, and he crawled forward to kiss Voldemort's robes in gratitude for his new magical silver hand.

Voldemort spoke to each of the Death Eaters in turn, and I could hear them reply. Lucius Malfoy's voice was among them. After Lucius asked how Voldemort had come back, the dark lord wandered over to Harry, still speaking too softly to hear. Theatrically, Voldemort extended a finger and touched Harry's face. Somehow, he'd overcome the protection that had driven him off the last time he and Harry met.

Voldemort talked and talked and talked. Harry couldn't escape from that crowd of Death Eaters as a bird, and I still couldn't move. There was nothing to do but wait and watch for an opportunity.

Pointing his wand at Harry, Voldemort cried out, "Crucio!" and Harry's screams echoed through the graveyard. This was the Nazi death camps all over again. People being tortured and killed feet from me, and me powerless to do anything about it.

At Voldemort's command, Harry was cut loose. Still reeling from the torture, it was all he could do to keep his feet under him. Then I saw what I hoped was my chance. Wormtail had stepped out of the circle and was heading toward me. He kicked the rock that was the boggart out of view behind a grave as he went. Then he bent down and scooped up Harry's wand and returned to the circle. He never got close enough to me to make a difference.

The Death Eaters closed ranks as Harry was handed his wand back, and he and Voldemort faced one another. I couldn't see what was happening through the crowding Death Eaters, but Harry's screams told me he'd been hit again with the cruciatus curse. The next I heard was Harry defiantly yelling, "I won't!"

Then I heard the exchange. Harry shouted "Expelliarmus!" the same instant Voldemort called, "Adava Kedavra!" There was a flash of red and green light, then something extrordinary happened.

Harry and Voldemort levitated over the circle of Death Eaters, their wands connected at the tips by a strand of golden light. They floated to an open patch of ground and strands from their wands wove a dome of golden light over the combatants.

"Do nothing!" yelled Voldemort. "Do nothing unless I command you!"

Suddenly, the vibrating strands of golden light produced an unearthly sound that made me believe we had a chance after all. Phoenix song filled the air, bolstering the hearts of the good and striking fear in the hearts of the wicked. I felt Nagini's grip loosen. It wasn't enough to where I could actually move, but it was confirmation that this snake was being effected.

Echoes of Harry's screams emerged from Voldemort's wand, followed by a spectral image of Wormtail's silver hand. Somehow, Harry was forcing Voldemort's wand to regurgitate its spells. Voldemort's red eyes widened in horror as a spectral image of an old man appeared, and rather than fade, looked around and seemed aware of his surroundings. A ghostly woman appeared next. Voldemort's victims were returning from the grave, and he was as terrified as he ought to be at that prospect.

My hands tightened over the metal disks in my hands, each marked with a blood seal that allowed a human soul to be attached to the metal in a stable fashion. I stared as the smoky images of Harry's parents emerged from Voldemort's wand.

A moment later, Harry wrenched his wand and broke the connection. The golden light vanished instantly along with the phoenix song. The shades of Voldemort's victims lingered. Harry made a run for where I laid, blasting Nagini with a curse that forced her to release me. My muscles were tensed for just that opportunity, and I sprang to my feet.

I threw both coins as hard as my weakened and half crushed arms could manage, and in the first instance of good fortune since I'd arrived in this graveyard, they arrived exactly where I wanted them to. As the soul coins passed through the spectral images of Lily and James Potter, I clapped my hands. Blue light shone from the blood seals on each coin, and the two ghostly figures vanished.

Death Eaters hurled curses after Harry as he ran. One of the missed curses blasted a gravestone to bits. A loud crack came as the boggart was revealed and once more took on the form of my human remains.

Blue light surrounded the soul coins and they flew back to my hands, which I separated to catch one coin in each hand. I could hear the confused voices of the Potters emanating from the blood seals. Just as I closed my fingers around the two coins, a bolt of green light hit me square in the chest. With no red stones left, a boggart mimicking my remains, and a killing curse snuffing out the life from every cell in my body, I crumpled and knew no more. 

* * *

I'd had a good life, all things considered. Sure, it was over sooner than I would have liked. I had to deal with a lot of painful experiences. But I'd had a positive impact on others. I'd left behind a legacy of knowledge and progress. I had loved and been loved in return. My last act had been trying to save lives. I had regrets, but on the whole, I was content.

My sense of taste was the first thing to return as the familiar, comforting flavor of red stones stimulated my tongue. Then came my sense of touch. My body felt just as weak and broken as it had when I fell in the graveyard. Every muscle ached, I had broken bones in various places, and my rib cage had been crushed, collapsing my lungs. I could hear people crowded around me, and I opened my eyes.

Sloth and Ron were standing over me. I was lying on the Quidditch field outside the maze. More people than I could count were crowding in to get a look at me. I tried to speak, but found I couldn't with collapsed lungs.

"Greed, it's okay," said Sloth. "Harry brought you back. He told us Wormtail drained your red stones. I knew you weren't really dead. You didn't melt."

"We force fed you all the red stones we had on us," said Ron. "You still don't look so good."

I raised my hands to clap and found that I still had the two soul coins clenched in a death grip. I shoved both coins ad Sloth who took them. The voices of the Potters to continued to ask where they were and why they couldn't move.

I clapped and saw a broken bone protruding from my left forearm. Deciding to deal with it later, I pressed my palms to my chest. My rib cage shifted into place and my lungs re inflated. It was a quick and dirty patch job, but it would be enough to let me talk.

"Where's Harry?" I wheezed.

"Professor Moody took him to the hospital wing," said Sloth.

I coughed up blood and choked out, "Voldemort's back. He has a new body. I saw it happen."

"Harry said the same thing," said Ron.

"Greed, who are these?" asked Sloth, holding the soul coins toward me.

"Harry's parents," I said weakly. "I don't know how, but their ghosts came back to protect him."

"Harry's parents?" asked Sloth staring down at the coins.

I nodded, then asked, "Did they catch Krum?"

"They did," said Ron. "Did you leave that note?"

Suddenly, Dumbledore broke off a conversation he'd been having with Minister Fudge, grabbed McGonagall and Snape, and took off at a run toward the castle.

"Something's wrong," said Sloth.

"Go help," I said, taking back the soul coins. "I'll be okay."

She nodded and ran after Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Snape. I got to my feet with Ron's help. Once I was standing, I stomped a foot and opened a staircase into my lab. I'd be dismantling it today anyway, as it was obviously not secure enough with Voldemort back. But I still had barrels of finished red stones down there, and I was going to need them. Once inside, I clapped and sealed myself and Ron inside, preventing anyone from following.

Ron watched me nervously, his hands ready to catch me if I collapsed. I must have looked worse than I felt, which was saying something. I set the soul coins down on a table, leaned over a barrel filled with red stones, and started shoveling them into my mouth. In no time, my body had fully regenerated.

I avoided eating any more than I needed to heal. I would be needing them for what came next. Beyond that, I'd just stared my own death in the face and returned. I'd learned that boggarts could emulate my remains well enough to weaken or paralyze me, but not well enough to make my death permanent. There were questions about my homunculus body I still hadn't answered, and I had some experiments in mind that could only be done when fully depleted.

"Excuse me, I think we've been very patient, but can you please explain what is going on?" came the voice of James Potter.

"We were only supposed to be able to linger for a few moments after the prior encantum ended," said Lily Potter's voice.

"Now that my lungs aren't punctured and my limbs aren't broken, I can explain," I said with a smile. I gestured for Ron to have a seat on my couch beside me as I sat down.

"Your souls have been attached to a pair of metal coins using alchemy. The details get a little technical, but as long as the blood seals are still intact, you'll remain in your current state. I can release you back to whatever afterlife you were enjoying if you want, or I can give you flesh and blood bodies of your own."

"Wait, are you talking about doing what Voldemort did, but to us?" asked James.

"My way is a little different," I said. "Instead of your own body, I'll build you a new body. One that can regenerate from any injury, which will be immune to age, and which has strength beyond that of a normal human."

"That sounds like dark magic," said Lily suspiciously.

"It isn't magic at all," I said. "It's science. And there's no taking bits of people unwillingly. No one had to die to bring you back. If I understand what happened at the graveyard right, you came back to protect Harry from Voldemort. I'm offering to return you to the flesh so you can do just that. Voldemort isn't done with Harry. He's going to need all the help and protection he can get."

"This is what you've been training me for," said Ron. "I've been learning alchemy so I could bring back Harry's parents."

I shook my head. "I can do this on my own. I don't need you to risk the Gate to bring them back. If you do this, it'll be for you. For your development as an alchemist, Ron. I want to see you reach your potential, but I won't force you or guilt you into it. Harry's parents can come back either way."

Ron looked contemplative. "Suppose they take something vital like my heart. What happens then?"

"I'll be supervising. If you're at risk of dying, I'll attach your soul to a coin and then make you a homunculus body."

He nodded. "I want to do this for him."

"I'm glad to hear it. Unless either of you two want your blood seals broken, I think we should get started on our preparations."

* * *

Ron and I set to work relocating equipment to the Chamber of Secrets. Between Mad-Eye Moody, Barty Crouch Jr., Wormtail, and probably Voldemort through them, there were too many people who knew about my lab for it to be safe to operate out of it anymore. I used a transmutation circle on my shoulder to emulate Sloth's powers so we wouldn't have to deal with the crowd. Once the last of the equipment was out, I deconstructed the entire lab.

Sloth found us down there while Ron was drawing his human transmutation circle. I had transmuted a false wall on one side of the Chamber to put our alchemy supplies in where they wouldn't be seen by Headless Nick during our fencing lessons. The Chamber of Secrets was so large, putting up a dividing wall to section off enough space to make up for my destroyed lab was barely noticeable.

"There you are," said Sloth. "What are you doing down here?"

"I moved all our stuff down here," I said. "I didn't want another of Voldemort's agents getting to it again."

"Didn't Voldemort find this place before we did?"

"If Voldemort's here personally, we've probably got bigger problems than our stuff," I replied.

"Point," acknowledged Sloth. "Well, it turns out it wasn't Krum."

"Wasn't Krum?" I repeated. "He tortured me with the cruciatus curse in the maze!"

"He was under the imperius curse when he did it," said Sloth. "Turns out Moody was Barty Crouch all year. He turned back after Dumbledore rescued Harry from him. They used vertiasyrum and he explained the whole thing."

"You mean-?" I asked.

"Yep," said Sloth cheerfully. "That pervert is getting a life sentence in Azkaban."

"Pervert?" asked Ron.

"Keep on that circle," I told Ron. "So, is the real Moody dead?"

"No," said Sloth. "He was locked up in his own trunk all year. Harry's got his map back, and both him and the real Moody are in the hospital wing."

"Are we going to get a defense professor that doesn't try to kill us at some point?" I asked.

"What about Lupin?" suggested Ron.

"He transformed and tried to kill us. I'm counting it," I said.

"Maybe we should just kill the next one on the first day of class and save ourselves the trouble," Sloth joked.

"Nah," I said. "Lupin and Fake Moody did actually teach us some useful stuff. Even Lockheart pointed us toward what may be a cure for lycanthropy. I say we learn everything they can teach us, then kill them."

Sloth, Ron, and I laughed. James and Lily didn't.

"Has a defense professor really tried to kill you every year?" asked Lily.

"Well, they try to kill Harry," I said. "We just get in the way of them trying as best we can."

"Remus tried to kill Harry?" asked James stunned.

"It was a full moon and he had a lot on his mind that night," said Sloth.

"Even so, once I can move again, we'll be having words," said James.

"With Dumbledore first," insisted Lily. "He has four years of staffing decisions to answer for."

"There," said Ron. "It's ready."

I looked over the array Ron had been learning about since Christmas. It looked right. The ingredients had been laid out in a pile in the center.

"We should go see Harry, then," I said. "A drop of his blood on each array to provide the template. His blood from theirs."

I picked up the coins, and Sloth led Ron and I up to the hospital wing. As we approached, we heard voices. First was Dumbledore.

"What has happened? Why are you disturbing these people? Minverva, I'm surprised at you. I asked you to stand guard over Barty Crouch."

"There's no need to stand guard over him anymore, Dumbledore!" yelled McGonagall, livid with rage. "The Minster has seen to that!"

We entered the room to see Molly and Bill Weasley standing at Harry's bedside. Moody was in a separate bed on the other side of the ward, unconscious. Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Fudge were all in the room. Sirius was at Harry's bedside as well in his dog form.

Snape spoke in a low, controlled voice. "When we told Mr. Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible for tonight's events, he seemed to feel his personal safety was in question. He insisted on summoning a dementor to accompany him into the castle."

"You had the kiss administered without a trial?" I demanded, horrified.

"By all accounts, he is no loss," said Fudge, puffing up. "It seems he has been responsible for several deaths!"

Dumbledore replied, "But he cannot now give testimony, Cornelius. He cannot give evidence about why he killed those people."

"Why he killed them? Well that's no mystery, is it? He was a raving lunatic!" declared Fudge. "From what Minvera and Severus have told me, he seems to have thought he was doing it all on You-Know-Who's instructions!"

"Lord Voldemort was giving him instructions, Cornelius," said Dumbledore. "Those people's deaths were mere byproducts of a plan to restore Voldemort to full strength again. The plan succeeded. Voldemort has been restored to his body."

Fudge didn't, or wouldn't, believe. Harry and I told him what we saw, and he brushed us off with a reference to Rita Skeeter's article from this morning. Snape showed him the Dark Mark tattooed on his forearm that darkened to a deep red when Voldemort's strength returned, and turned black and burned hot when Voldemort summoned them to his side. Fudge ignored him, acting as though this was some sort of elaborate prank. James and Lily were dismissed as a pair of charmed coins, made to say whatever Harry wanted them to say.

Dumbledore tried to convince Fudge to remove the dementors from Azkaban, as they would join Voldemort first chance they got, and would release his loyal servants on the way out. He also tried to convince Fudge to court the giants before Voldemort made them a better offer. In the end, Fudge stormed off. He paused to drop the thousand galleons prize money on Harry's nightstand for us to divvy up.

"If you need anything more from us, just say the word," I said as Dumbledore began distributing orders to Sirius, Snape, Bill, and McGonagall.

"We shall talk at length later," said Dumbledore. "For now, I think we would all benefit from having James and Lily back."

"I need a bit of your blood, Harry," said Ron. "I know you've been through a lot tonight, but-"

"Take it," said Harry, extending his arm. I cut off a bit of his bloodstained sleave.

"It won't be long, I promise," I told Harry. 

* * *

Sloth kept the soul coins in the next room, while I supervised Ron's human transmutation attempt. He would be making a homunculus body for James. I had a fresh soul coin ready to use on Ron in an emergency. He dropped a scrap of Harry's bloody robe on the top of the pile of ingredients and put his hands on the array.

Gold light poured from the array, which began to flicker red and blue as the reaction built power. Then, the Gate opened. I was far enough back that I risked neither exposure to the Truth, nor the loss of body parts to the Gate Children, but I was close enough to see what was happening to Ron.

He stared into the Gate, overwhelmed by what he saw there as the tiny black hands reached out on their amorphous, tentacle-like arms to grab hold of him in various places. Flesh began to break down near his left shoulder, and from that point, the deconstruction spread down his arm until at last his fingertips vanished in sparks of golden light. The Gate closed then vanished. I could hear the labored breathing of the newborn homunculus and sobs of pain coming from Ron.

I was at Ron's side in an instant, stopping the bleeding with a red stone. I avoided going too far with my healing attempts, lest I unintentionally interfere with something Madam Pomfrey could do for him. I quickly headed out to Sloth and retrieved James' soul coin and brought it back in to Ron, who was looking between his bloody shoulder and the misshapen pile of organs he'd given his left arm to create. He looked like he wanted to throw up.

"We talked about this," I said firmly. "The oroboros mark is on a patch of skin somewhere in that mess. You need to find it and attach this soul."

I'd drilled him on this repeatedly through the term, and that training kicked in as he numbly began to step toward the homunculus. Dropping to his knees, he began sifting through the mass with his one hand. Eventually, he found it, and pressed the soul coin to the oroboros mark. Blue light accompanied the transmutation, and suddenly, the gasps of the homunculus became more panicked and desperate.

"Good, the soul's attached," I said. "Only one step left." I handed a basket of red stones to Ron.

He was pale and wretched more than once, but he kept it together and put stone after stone in the homunculus' mouth until its organs properly rearranged themselves, its bones were all under its skin, and its breathing was easy. A black robe covered the body of a purple eyed, black haired James Potter. The oroboros mark had migrated to his right ankle.

James looked at his hands and flexed his fingers, then his eyes fixed on Ron. "We have to get you to the hospital wing!"

"Go," I said. "I'll take care of Lily."

James lifted Ron up in his arms and carried him out of the room. Ron gratefully collapsed now that his work was done. I clapped and used alchemy to scribe my own human transmutation array.

With practiced efficiency, I measured the ingredients into a tray at the center of my array, then touched the nearest line of the circle. I circulated energy through the circle, and it glowed blue. As it had before, the Gate opened. The experience of having all the knowledge in the universe forced through your mind is never something you get so used to as to become mundane. I'd trained to stay focused in the face of this burst of omniscience to be able to protect myself from the Gate Children, clapping and deconstructing their grasping limbs as they reached out to take something away from me, but seeing a unified understanding of physics, alchemy, history, and even magic pass before my mind's eye never ceased to be an intense experience.

Gaps in my knowledge were filled. Theories I had right became facts. False ideas were revealed as such and shattered on exposure to the Truth. No human mind could retain everything that I saw. Only bits and pieces that I could latch on to because they were related to things I already knew remained.

The Gate closed, and I retrieved the soul coin from Sloth. When Lily Potter was fully regenerated, her oroboros mark was on the nape of her neck. The three of us walked upstairs. Harry and Ron were waiting for us in the hospital wing.

* * *

"Mum, it's alright, really. Greed didn't put me up to it. It was my choice," I heard Ron's voice as he tried to placate his mother.

"Can Madam Pomfrey grow your arm back?" I asked stepping into the room. Lily joined James in private conversation with Harry.

"If you had the arm I could reattach it, no problem," said Madam Pomfrey angrily. "I have to do it all the time on splinching victims during apparition lessons. But no, I can't just grow back severed limbs. What were you thinking?"

"I'd really rather you waited until you were older before becoming a homunculus," I said, contemplatively.

"Wait until he's older?!" demanded Mrs. Weasley. "That didn't stop you from letting him do whatever it was that lost him an arm!"

"Mrs. Weasley,-" I started, but she continued on.

"I see you still have all your limbs! We took you into our home! We trusted you!"

"Ron is alive!" I shouted back, my forceful tone taking her by surprise. "He made the choice to risk life and limb to bring Harry's parents back, and he succeeded! This isn't the first time he's risked life and limb for Harry's sake, and it won't be the last! What Ron went through today has left him with new powers that will hopefully let him survive the war that's coming! And if Madam Pomfrey can't give him back his arm, I will!"

"Mum, you read that Quibbler article I sent you?" said Ron. "That's what we made Harry's parents into. Greed offered it to me and Harry too. He just things I should wait until I'm full grown."

"And why didn't you wait until he was full grown to do this?" demanded Mrs. Weasley.

"Because he was ready for it," I said firmly. "Ron is a brilliant alchemist who spent the last half year hearing about the risks. Every precaution that could be taken was taken, and he succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of even most Amestrian alchemists. He made hsi choice and now he gets to make another. Ron, if you want me to make you a homunculus now, I can. If you want to wait, I'll talk to Dumbledore about getting you a prosthetic that'll get you functional."

"If you think I should wait, I'll wait," said Ron. "If you can hurry up with that new arm, though, I think it'll calm mom down a bit."

I left quickly and headed back up to my dorm. I collected my time turner and invisibility cloak from my trunk, donned the cloak, and went back in time. I sneaked in to where Barty Crouch was being held, and I waited for Fudge to arrive. The dementor didn't even wait for an order before leaning down to perform the kiss. Either Fudge had already ordered the kiss before even seeing Crouch, or the dementors were even more out of control than I already suspected.

Before the dementor could devour Crouch Jr.'s soul, I pressed a soul coin to his bare flesh and stole it first. Souls were too valuable to be wasted as dementor food. I slipped out with my prize and waited, invisibly, for a chance to talk to Dumbledore about Ron's arm.

When I found him, the human transmutation attempt would already be underway. I took off my invisibility cloak and approached Dumbledore as he walked alone through a hallway in the castle. He didn't seem slightly surprised to see me.

"Mr. Oren, I'd been hoping to talk with you about what happened in the graveyard," Dumbledore said. "I have already spoken with Harry and gotten his version of events. Would you please come up to my office and share your version?"

I did exactly that, and was soon relating what I had seen and done once Harry and I grasped the Triwizard cup. When I'd finished, I then explained what I had done with the soul coins containing Harry's parents, and what Ron had sacrificed to make it possible.

"That spell Voldemort did for Wormtail," I said, "can you do that for Ron?"

"Lord Voldemort possesses many powers I have never had," said Dumbledore. Then a smile appeared on his face as he continued, "However, this is not one of them. I shall make my way down to visit Mr. Weasley this very moment."

Dumbledore got up and I followed him down to the hospital wing. We arrived a few minutes after I left. Everyone looked up.

"James, Lily, it is lovely to see the both of you again," said Dumbledore by way of greetings. "I would like to speak with both of you regarding Harry's living arrangements this summer, but first, I need to speak with the young Mr. Weasley. I won't be long."

Dumbledore walked up to Ron's bedside and drew his wand. "You did a brave and noble thing for Harry today. One I am certain your friend will not soon forget."

Dumbledore waved his wand just as Voldemort had, and a trail of silver followed the wand. After a moment, it formed and shaped itself into an arm, which attached itself to Ron's shoulder. Ron flexed his fingers and found he could use his arm just as though it were his own flesh and blood.

Mrs. Weasley warmed up considerably now that Ron's limb had been replaced. Dumbledore drew the curtains around Harry's bed and cast a spell to muffle sounds so they could speak privately. Ron clapped his hands and touched a goblet full of water at his bedside. The water glowed blue and froze solid.

"Now I don't need a circle either," said Ron, pleased.

"I told you he got new powers," I said to Mrs. Weasley. "From what I've managed to learn about this world's history, Ron is the first human being in this world to be able to do what he just did. You should be very proud of him. I am."

"Oh, I am proud of you, Ron," said Mrs. Weasley, pulling her son into a hug. "I love you so much. Please, don't worry me like that again."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Raising the Potters from the dead is a bit I wanted to do since starting in on this story. Their influence is going to end up a much bigger impact than Sloth and Greed have had so far.


	33. Chapter 43: Explainations and Aftermath

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 43) Explanations and Aftermath  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Ron and Harry were released from the hospital wing a few days later. Harry was worried about Voldemort's return, and traumatized by what he went through in the graveyard. He was also processing the fact that his dead parents had come back to life. We had all agreed to let Harry come to us if he needed to talk, but otherwise to give him time and space to process it all for himself.

Ron spent time showing off his new alchemic abilities, as well as the superhuman strength of his magical silver arm. I fielded any questions about what had happened in the maze, so Harry wouldn't have to. It seemed a large part of the student body believed Rita Skeeter's account of Harry being a dangerous and unstable person who was making up stories, and that the rest of us were lackeys backing up Harry's story out of loyalty or credulousness. Still, anyone who bothered to ask got the details of Voldemort's rebirth.

Sloth and I gave James and Lily the basics about how their new bodies worked. Dumbledore sent Lupin to their graves to vanish their remains so they couldn't be used against them. He'd further explained the blood wards he'd set up to James and Lily. Harry'd have to go back to staying with the Dursleys over the summer, so James and Lily were going to be staying as house guests with them.

We'd barely had time to sort out various details by the time of the leaving feast. The real Moody had recovered, and was at the staff table, still twitchy and nervous from his ordeal. I apologized to Krum for suspecting him of being behind this, and expressed my hope that he'd stay in touch and not beat himself up too badly for what he'd done under the Imperious curse. In his speech, Dumbledore explained about Voldemort's rebirth, and that the Ministry was refusing to believe the truth. He extended an open invitation to our foreign guests to return at any time, reminding everyone that we all stand together in the fight against the dark side.

A few final details were cleared up on the Hogwarts Express, including that Karkaroff had decided to flea rather than rejoin the Death Eaters, that Crouch Sr. had been under the Imperius curse all year and Percy was being investigated for missing it, and that Crouch Jr. had killed his father when he broke free and came to Hogwarts to warn Dumbledore.

"I don't understand why you aren't restocking on red stones," said Sloth as I examined a patch of skin on my arm I'd deliberately burned shortly after convincing Dumbledore to make Ron a new arm.

"Because I got complacent and it nearly got me killed," I replied. "The boggart couldn't keep me dead permanently, but if Harry hadn't thought to retrieve my body, would I have laid there forever without help, or would I have eventually recovered? We rely so much on our regeneration, we don't have enough data to know what would've happened. I'll eat up once I have my answers."

"I'm sorry we had to find out this way," said Sloth, "but it's comforting to know the boggart thing won't do it."

I nodded my agreement. "I also need to give some thought to what happened when Nagini pinned me. I can't let that be a winning move next time."

"Next time, you won't have to fight alone," said Sloth, squeezing my hand. "So, how long do you figure it'll be before Rita Skeeter writes up a hit piece on Fudge for ignoring Voldemort?"

"No idea how long it'll take," I said, "but it won't be Rital Skeeter. I talked to Hermione. She figured out Skeeter's been spying on us all year as a beetle. She's an unregistered animagus. Chamber of Secrets is still secret. Advantages of Slytherin's wards and a basilisk. But she's been most everywhere else in the school. Anyway, Hermione's blackmailing her into not writing for a year."

"That's actually pretty harsh for what she actually did," said Sloth.

"She really didn't like being Lust in Skeeter's article," I said.

* * *

It was a good thing Harry and his parents were back with the Dursleys for the summer. It meant he didn't have to watch the macabre experiments I spent the first week performing on myself. Since the trace only attached to underage wizards, the Ministry had no way to detect magic around Sloth and I, so I used the time turner liberally in my experiments.

The results included both good news and bad news. The good news was that even with no red stones in our bodies, we would eventually heal fully from any injury. The burn on my arm would have caused permanent nerve damage in a human, but I could feel the patch of skin as soon as the scab cleared. That suggested even if we were seemingly dead, we would eventually heal back to life.

The bad news was that eventually represented a very long time. Intact but dead tissue healed faster than missing tissue, but if the numbers held up, an Adava Kedavra would take us out of commission for years before we regained consciousness. And even at that point, it would be years more before we would be able to move under our own power.

I'd spent a subjective month cutting my body open, looking at my body under a microscope, and extrapolating based on how my body responded to certain types of damage. It had hurt, but the knowledge gained made it worth it for me. But it wasn't just me suffering. A week of watching me hurt myself over and over again was about all Sloth could stand, so I accepted this was the data I had, ate a full barrel of red stones and regenerated back to perfect health.

"I've been keeping up with Harry while you've been busy," said Sloth. "Apparently, James tried to be on his best behavior to make up for something that happened before they died. Lily just about exploded when she found out how they were treating Harry, though. Said she'd never have agreed to take Harry back there if it weren't for Voldemort actually being back."

"How's Harry taking all this?" I asked.

"He's glad to have his mom and dad back, but he's getting pretty frustrated that the Daily Prophet's still painting him as crazy and denying Voldemort's back."

"Sure taking his time to start his reign of terror, isn't he?" I noted.

"I'd bet he's taking advantage of the Ministry being in denial to marshal and consolidate his forces," said Sloth thoughtfully. "His inner circle came back in the graveyard, but you don't take over the world with thirty wizards."

"Any response from Krum yet?" I asked.

"Not since the owl he sent telling you it might take time to research," said Sloth with a smirk.

"He did something to his soul," I said firmly. "It's the only thing that could've made the soul coin fail like it did in the graveyard. I've never seen any mention of magic that might do that in the Hogwarts library and I assimilated the whole forbidden section last year."

"I'm sure if it's in the Durmstrang library, Viktor'll find it. You remember how eager he was to make it up to you for that cruciatus curse."

As if on cue, an owl arrived bearing a letter from Viktor Krum. The package of documents came with a warning from Krum that I should never attempt to perform the magic described. The documents described an artifact called a horcrux. According to the theory, murder causes a part of the soul to break off. Using a spell, the killer can bind the severed piece of their soul to an object. That object, called a horcrux, served as an anchor for the rest of the wizard's spirit, preventing them from fully dying and instead causing them to linger on as an incorporeal spirit until means can be found to restore themselves to a body.

The description of the resulting object was familiar. Riddle's diary. He had used murdering Myrtle to make his first horcrux. There were obviously more, since according to the information, destroying the horcrux severs the anchor and causes the incorporeal spirit to pass on. A wizard with a horcurx can feel the severing of his anchor and make a new one if he's embodied at the time, but the diary had been destroyed before Wormtail found him and constructed the rudimentary body for him.

Horcurxes were apparently difficult to destroy. Basilisk venom and a kind of enchanted, quasisentient flame called fiendfyre could do the job. Apparently, Salazar Slytherin had helped his friend Godric Gryffindor improve his sword back in the day by impregnating it with basilisk venom. It was a pity the rivalry between their houses had gotten so bad in recent years.

"We have to pass this on to Dumbledore," said Sloth. "He seems to be the one running the anti-Voldemort activities until the Ministry pulls their head out of their ass."

I nodded. "We should also send a copy to Sirius and see if he can put together anything he heard in Azkaban to figure out what other objects Voldemort used."

"You write the letters up," said Sloth. "I'll head next door and fill in Harry and his parents."

"No, I should go," I said. "I've been so absorbed with my experiments, I haven't been by to see him all week."

Sloth got stated on the letters and I walked next door. I noted with a kind of petty satisfaction that the water use restrictions from the dry weather had left their lawn parched and yellow. Ours,meanwhile, was flourishing thanks to having been alchemically modified to require less care and upkeep. I knocked on the Dursleys' front door.

Petunia opened it and let out a scandalized gasp. "You can't be dressed like that!"

I was wearing my default black outfit with boots, long pants, and an open half vest that showed off the oroboros tatoo in the center of my chest. It wasn't that I was dressed like a wizard. It was that she thought I looked like a juvenile delinquent. I still hadn't shifted from my fourteen year old form.

"Is Harry here?" I asked, ignoring her comment. I asked loudly enough to make sure if he was in, he'd hear. And so the neighbors would take more and more notice of my presence the longer she refrained from inviting me in. It worked on both counts, with Petunia stepping aside and Harry coming down the stairs.

"Greed, how are you doing?" asked Harry.

"I'm still working through what happened in the graveyard," I admitted, stepping inside. "How about you?"

"My scar's hurting a lot more often now that Voldemort's back to full strength," reported Harry. "I'm still having nightmares about what happened."

"Advantages of not needing to sleep," I acknowledged. "Anyway, I have some information. Are your parents here?"

"Dad's off doing something for Dumbledore. Says he can't talk about it." Harry's face had a resentful expression on it. It was hardly surprising, given that he just got his parents back. "Mom's in the back, though."

We headed into the kitchen where Lily Potter was brewing a potion on the Dursleys' stove top. Petunia didn't look happy about it, but she didn't comment. Obviously, they'd already had this out. Lily was wearing a borrowed dress of Petunia's, probably in a token effort to blend in to the muggle surroundings.

"How are you adapting to your new body?" I asked her as we came in.

"It's a little strange," she admitted. "I still can't get used to not ever getting tired."

"What are you brewing?" I asked.

"Something for Harry," she replied. "It induces a deep, restful, dreamless sleep. Until the nightmares go away on their own, it'll make sure he actually manages to get the rest he needs."

"I've come over to let you know word came back from Viktor Krum. I think I know what Voldemort did to himself that prevented the soul coin from working, and that prevented him from dying all the way last time."

I explained, in detail, what I knew and suspected about the horcruxes. Unless we figured out a way of finding and identifying the objects he used, killing Voldemort's current body would be a temporary measure at best. Worse, Harry noted, was that now that his Death Eaters had seen him come back, they won't dare abandon his cause again if we did drive him back into spirit form, so he'd return much faster.

"I'll make sure Dumbledore hears about this," promised Lily. "James and I have been switching off, one of us with Harry and the other helping Dumbledore."

"You and Dumbledore are getting on again?" I asked.

"He had a very well rehearsed explanation," said Lily. "I'd have given him worse, but with Voldemort back, we don't want him crippled."

Harry smiled at that. He knew his parents would die for him. They'd done it once already. And now they were standing up to Dumbledore on his behalf too. They'd kept the row private, to not undermine Dumbledore's efforts to rally the wizarding world against Voldemort, but htey'd still had it out.

"Can I walk Greed home?" asked Harry.

"Okay, but come right back," said Lily. "In a few minutes, we'll need to add some valerium root, and you could use all the practice you can get dicing. OWLs next term, and I won't have you failing potions."

As we left the house, Harry said, "Potions was mom's best subject. Dad's just as insistent I do well on my Transfiguration OWL."

"How does it feel to be in a house with people encouraging your magical studies?" I asked with a smile.

"It's great," said Harry enthusiastically. "I can't thank you enough for what you did. You and Ron."

"I only wish I had more coins in the graveyard," I said. "We should make capturing Death Eater wands a priority. We might be able to revive more of those killed by the Adava Kedavra."

"That's a good idea," said Harry. "Listen, there's something I wanted to talk to you about. You know the prize money for winning the tournament?"

"You keep it," I said. "I'm taking full advantage of there not being any laws against making gold with alchemy here."

"I thought you'd feel that way, but I wanted to be sure," said Harry. "Actually, I've got plenty of gold too. I wanted to give the tournament winnings to Fred and George."

"Ron can make gold too," I reminded him.

"I know, but they're proud. All the Weasleys are. They let Ron help out here and there, and he's been giving them great Christmas presents, but the twins won't take it from Ron to start their joke shop. I'm going to call it an investment and see if that does the trick."

"Good luck," I said. "I hope they take it. Those canary creams they were passing around last year were inspired, an I hear they've improved on their ton tongue toffees. They were born to run a joke shop."

"Well, I'll see you around," said Harry.

"You know you're welcome to come over any time you like, right? I'm sure Sloth's said as much."

"Yeah, she has. I just... I know you were still dealing with things."

"Dealing with what happened and beating you at video games on Dudley's 'broken' playstation aren't mutually exclusive. I mean it, come by sometime."

"You had a lucky run last time," said Harry with a smile.

"Prove it," I challenged, sporting a smile of my own.

Harry waved goodbye and returned to his aunt and uncle's house where his mother was waiting to help supervise his root dicing. I paused to reflect, and concluded that twice as much good had come of that fight in the graveyard as bad.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Now that our heroes know Horcruxes are a thing, the hunt can begin.


	34. Chapter 45: The Order of the Phoenix

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 45) The Order of the Phoenix  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Harry came over a lot in the following three weeks. Letters were coming in from Ron and Hermione, indicating that Dumbledore had them doing some work for hte war effort, but they couldn't give details. Owls could be intercepted, and codes could be cracked. From what I gathered, the Weasley family was firmly involved in Dumbledore's plan, as were James, Lily, and Lupin. Hermione was being trusted to keep secrets from her muggle parents. Neville and Luna were apparently out of the loop the same way Harry, Sloth, and I were.

Harry had begun to notice semi-regular psychic intrusion attempts. As these coincided with the stabs of pain from his scar, he identified the intruder as Voldemort. Presumably, Dumbledore suspected this would happen, which was why he wasn't involving Harry in his plans. Without being able to coordinate with Dumbledore on sending fake information, we agreed the best option was to project a fake view of an isolated but otherwise normal summer. Harry needed to conceal his consultations with us and his parents on sensitive subjects, but could let through his frustration at Dumbledore not involving him and his hopes that the Ministry of Magic would come to their senses about Voldemort's return.

Now that Harry's parents were living with him again, the trace couldn't tell if any spell cast in the house came from Harry, so James was able to let Harry get away with practicing dueling and jinxes whenever it was him in the house instead of Lily. Harry wasn't the only one preparing himself. I added flame alchemy arrays to the backs of my hands as a quasi-permanent addition, and practiced daily to improve my aim and control.

I also added a transmutation circle on my back, in the same place as Sloth's oroboros tattoo. It had three functions. First, it allowed me to emulate Sloth's Ultimate Escape, so I wouldn't have to worry about being pinned next time I went up against Voldemort and his snake. Second, it transmuted the Ultimate Shield on and off of my body, so I could do it without clapping even if I was drained of red stone energy. Finally, it repaired my body, sealing cuts, bending bones, expelling foreign objects, and generally making it so I'd only need to expend red stone energy when shape shifting or regenerating something that had been severed completely from my body.

Sloth helped me practice with passing through matter. Her experience and insights helped me progress from walking through walls to traveling underground safely and forming pseud-handholds to climb sheer surfaces easily. In a soundproofed room in our basement, we set up some sandbags and she shot me with a pistol and a shotgun until I had the trick of phasing through bullets.

It was evening, about a month since the summer holiday had started, when an urgent knock came at our door. A woman I recognized as one of the neighbors was there, eyeing the street up and down worriedly when I opened it. She'd been muttering to herself angrily, but turned and spoke clearly when she saw me.

"Harry's been attacked by dementors," she said without preamble.

"Is he-?" I began before being cut off.

"He drove them off and I got him home, but he insisted you needed to be told."

"Are they still around?" I asked, looking both ways down the street.

"Can't say," she said. "There was a pair of them, but Harry drove them off. Could be more."

"If you got Harry home, he'll be safe there," I said.

"Here's your pin, Greed," said Sloth, handing me the small metal disk I'd prepared that when pinned to my shirt shielded me from the debilitating effects of a dementor's presence. She'd found the pin while I was talking and already had hers on.

"Thanks," I said, pinning it to my shirt. "We can run a patrol of the neighborhood and take down any that are still here. Come on, Loki!"

The woman nodded her assent and said, "Dumbledore says you can take care of yourselves. I need to report this to him right away. Can't count on that useless Mundungus Fletcher to do it. If he'd just stayed at his post, none of this would have happened."

"We'll talk more later," I said to the woman as Sloth, Loki, and I stepped out. I spared a quick glance at the foeglass I had hanging in the living room, but the only image clear enough to make out was a short, squat woman I'd never seen before.

Patrolling the neighborhood, we didn't bother with wands. They were mostly for show, and any dementor we found wouldn't be reporting back to its keepers. Aside from an unusual number of owls around Harry's house, we couldn't find anything unusual. Once we were convinced the neighborhood was secure, we got home and phoned Harry.

"Hello?" came Harry's voice.

"This is Greed. We just finished a sweep of the neighborhood. No sign of any more dementors."

"Why didn't you get behind the wards?" demanded Harry.

"If the dementors were still around, they could've attacked the muggles. You were safe,so the next priority was to protect them."

"Okay," said Harry, audibly calming himself down. "If you're done, then, can you come over here? Something's happened."

That something turned out to be an expulsion letter from the Ministry of Magic for violating the International Statute of Secrecy. Harry'd used his patronus to drive off the dementors who were about to eat Dudley's soul, and the Ministry was counting that as a violation.

James was absolutely outraged, noting that both the Statute of Secrecy and the restrictions on underage magic had clauses permitting the use of magic to protect oneself and others. I asked how they knew about Dudley being there and that neither of them cast the patrons charm. The trace wouldn't have given them that information. Of course, the dementors themselves would have known the details.

The expulsion letter had been followed a few minutes later by a correction, indicating that the expulsion would be contingent on a hearing, and not effective immediately as the first letter said. Arthur Weasley and likely Dumbledore as well had intervened on Harry's behalf. Admittedly, it was more likely they had saved Fudge's life from a pair of pissed off, magically empowered, immortal homunculi than that they'd saved Harry's wand and his right to attend Hogwarts, but James and Lily not needing to burn the Ministry to the ground as had been their first impulse was a plus.

"Harry," I asked when those details had been communicated, "what does Mrs. Figg know about dementors?"

"I didn't know she knew anything about the magical world until tonight," said Harry. "She said she'd been keeping watch over me for Dumbledore. Apparently she's a squib."

"Harry," said Lily with a forced calm, "You said Vernon and Petunia had her watch you when they went out. How long have you known her?"

"As long as I can remember," said Harry with a shrug.

"I'm going to kill him, James," said Lily. "He had someone watching over Harry all these years, and he never did anything about..." She gave Petunia a withering glare.

"We still need him," said James, adopting a jovial mood. "We should probably wait until after he helps sort out this hearing."

While James had tried to brush it off as a joke, Lily had sounded very serious indeed about her intent to murder Albus Dumbledore. Petunia was keeping silent. Given that she was even more directly responsible for the abusive childhood Harry had suffered it was a wise move.

"So, has Voldemort already taken over the Ministry?" asked Sloth, going over Harry's letters. "He beat Voldemort in the graveyard last month because his wand was related to Voldemort's. Now the Ministry is fast tracking the destruction of that wand. Even if Harry were cleared, a new wand wouldn't have the same effect on Voldemort's."

"And Dumbledore did say the dementors would join him as soon as he asked," added Harry.

"We're pretty sure Fudge, at least, is operating under his own free will," said James. "If someone's under the Imperius curse, you can see their eyes flick around whenever they're trying to fight it. It isn't foolproof, but Fudge's shown no signs. We think Lucius Malfoy is influencing him the old fashioned way. Flattery, favor trading, and bribery."

"Dumbledore was supposed to have a competent wizard tailing you while you were out of the house," said Lily. "Instead, he sent a squib and you had to fight off two dementors on your own. We are very proud of you for that, by the way, Harry."

"Mrs. Figg said Mundungus Fletcher was supposed to be watching. He popped out to buy some stolen cauldrons," explained Harry.

"Convenient," I said. "I'd bet anything that cauldron deal was related to the dementor attack. Whoever sent the dementors lured away the guard."

"That would imply the Order's got a spy in it," said James.

"Unless your guard duty schedules were regular enough to be figured out by an outside observer," said Sloth, recalling Fake Moody's advice.

"Either way, this place is pretty well spoiled as a safe house until we close our security gaps," said James. "I've already sent a message to the Order of the Phoenix. They'll be a few days setting up security for the move, so we should all stay inside the house's wards until they do."

"A few days!" bristled Vernon Dursley. "You may be able to lay about the house for days on end, but some of us have to work for a living!"

"Feel free to go to work," said Lily coldly. "Since Harry's their target, they'll probably only try to eat the souls of people he has reason to care whether they live or die."

* * *

A few days with the Dursleys had me climbing the walls. There'd actually been less space per person the times I'd visited the Weasleys, but they'd been friendly, decent, and happy to share space. Here, I felt trapped with people who hated everything about me,b ut refrained from trying to harm me only because they feared the consequences. It was hard to believe Harry'd survived fourteen years of them without going insane. And I understood this was them on their best behavior.

Finally, they arrived. Among them were Remus Lupin and Mad-Eye Moody. Introductions were made all around, including a metamorphmagus named Tonks who currently chose to look like a young woman with purple, spiky hair. Moody explained we'd all be flying to the new safe house by broomstick, and went over the contingencies if one or all of the escort was killed en-route. Lupin and Tonks tried to brush off the possibility, but I felt better knowing it had been considered.

Disillusionment charms were put on all of us. The charm caused us to blend into the background like a chameleon. Loki was disillusioned and harnessed to the back of my broom. I had to move the array on the broomstick under a layer of wood to prevent the alchemic light from giving us away as we flew through the night sky. Finally, we kicked off and were in the air.

Moody directed us along a roundabout path that kept us in the air for hours. It was clearly meant to throw off any potential pursuers, but we were flying so long that both Sloth and I had to resort to using a red stone to boost our flagging alchemy. Maintaining a continuous transmutation for hours was draining no matter how skilled you were. Finally, we landed.

Once we were on the ground, Moody used a device that looked a bit like a cigarette lighter to extinguish all the street lamps, then made us read a piece of paper and told us to memorize it. "The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London."

When I looked up, a building was there that hadn't been before. This was the effect of the Fidelius charm that Harry's parents had tried to use fourteen years ago. We were ushered inside. Moody relit the street lights, then lifted the disillusionment charms. Finally, some gas lamps were lit so we could see where we were. Loki sniffed the air and alerted, first in one direction, then another. Apparently there was a lot in the house he didn't like.

Harry, Sloth, and I were quickly ushered upstairs while the Order of the Phoenix had a meeting. We were warned to keep our voices down in the hall and told more explanations would be forthcoming. Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were waiting for us in an upstairs bedroom. Mrs. Weasley left quickly. The others filled us in on what had been going on here. Fred and George apparated in partway through and added their two cents.

Everyone underage was being kept out of the meetings, but Fred and George had developed a device they called an extendable ear. It looked like a piece of string. You insert one end into your ear and the other end snakes toward your eavesdropping target. You can hear clearly anything said near the far end of the string. They'd learned a good deal using them, but the Order had gotten wise to them and had taken to magically sealing the door against them during their meetings.

The Order of the Phoenix was a secret society of wizards who were resisting Voldemort under Dumbledore. This was their headquarters. It had numerous security enchantments placed on it by Sirius' family before he had inherited it. The fidelius charm was new, added by Dumbledore, who was serving as secret keeper. In addition to bad tempered, bigoted portraits and a more than slightly crazy house elf named Kreacher, the house played home to a massive number of pests that the underage inhabitants had been working to remove. As Sloth and I had adopted our fifteen year old forms before coming, that would likely include us.

The Order's activities thus far included monitoring known Death Eaters, growing its membership, keeping track of the Ministry of Magic, and guard duties. The most disturbing news by far, well beyond the Ministry's continued slandering of Harry, and Voldemort keeping out of the papers, was a split in the Weasley clan. Percy had been promoted to work directly under Fudge. When it was pointed out this was likely a political play to get Fudge information on Dumbledore, especially given that the Ministry weren't happy with his performance with Crouch Sr. last year, Percy flew into a rage, disowned his family, and moved to London. He wasn't talking to any of them anymore.

The meeting closed and Snape left the house immediately. I helped Mrs. Weasley with the cooking. The time during the meeting, I'd been able to rest up enough to use alchemy again. One simple transmutation later, everything that needed to be chopped or pealed was.

While Mrs. Weasley cooked the stew, Sirius vented his irritation at being cooped up in this house. Even if the Ministry of Magic didn't know about his animagus form, thanks to Wormtail, the Death Eaters did. Snape in particular had been antagonizing him over being no use to the Order.

After dinner, a conflict arose between Mrs. Weasley and Sirius about how much of what was going on to tell Harry. After Sirius won that argument, with considerable support from James, Lily, and Lupin, we learned a few more details. Fudge had convinced himself Dumbledore's talk about Voldemort's return was a pretext he was using to try and seize power. We also learned that the Order was guarding something Voldemort was after, something he didn't have in the last war and which they didn't dare let him get his hands on.

In return, I offered up the horcurx information I'd gotten from Viktor Krum. Sirius took the opportunity to be of use and racked his brains, eventually recalling that his cousin, Belatrix Lestrange, had supposedly received something important Voldemort had told her to protect. She'd placed whatever it was in her Gringotts vault. He'd pieced this together from overheard mutterings in Azkaban. Bill promised to look into a way to access her vault and see what was in there.

* * *

The next day, we got started helping with the cleaning. Sirius was so keen on getting rid of anything in the house that reminded him of his youth there that he wasn't objecting to Mundungus nicking family silverware and odd heirlooms. Anything Mundungus wasn't stealing was going in the trash anyway, unless Fred or George saw some use for it. Kreacher was trying to salvage the heirlooms and hide them, but he wasn't very effective. I managed ot take down a portrait of Sirius' mother that screeched invectives at the top of her lungs whenever she wasn't kept behind a set of thick drapes. Due to a permanent sticking spell, I had to take down part of the wall with it, but the portrait came down.

Each room cleared and scoured was a solid day's work, and more dangerous than expected. Ten years of accumulated magical pests in a house which had started off full of poisons and dark artifacts resulted in us only managing with team work and all the defense training we could muster. It was hard, slow work, but very satisfying once we got a room properly livable. Some of the fast, insect like creatures made for good practice with my control with flame alchemy once I convinced Mrs. Weasley I wasn't going to burn down the house.

The day of his trail, Harry left early with Mr. Weasley. James and Lily stayed behind at headquarters. The Ministry of Magic didn't acknowledge them as being Harry's parents, and as such, they weren't allowed to be with him for the hearing. It was suspected among the Order that Fudge might've been more inclined to accept their identities as valid if they hadn't been so insistent in their support of Harry's story and had the tale of their resurrection not been so intertwined with Voldemort's rebirth.

We all waited nervously for the results of Harry's hearing. He had a tale to tell when he returned. Fudge had pulled some underhanded maneuvers to try and deprive Harry of council, including last minute changes to the time and place. But Dumbledore had shown up, presented Mrs. Figg as a witness, and gotten Harry narrowly acquitted. Percy had been there to assist Fudge, and had refused to acknowledge Harry at any point.

During the remaining couple of weeks, I worked out a way to use alchemy to listen on in the meetings we were barred from. It took combining ideas from Sloth's recording device, Hohenheim's protections on the Philosopher's Stone, computer theory I'd been learning about for Muggle Studies, and some from Rita Skeeter. The result was a small metal insect with an array similar to what I used on the chessmen animating it.

My creation would fly down and hide in the dining room during a meeting, listening and watching. Then, after the meeting, it would return to me. On command, it unfolded its wings and revealed a red stone fragment in its abdomen. Pieces turned and reoriented themselves so that a hologram of blue light was projected above my spy bug and the scene was replayed exactly as it had happened, complete with gestures, facial expressions, and any papers being referenced.

We didn't learn much more. Whatever was being guarded was in the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry of Magic, and Bill wasn't having much luck persuading the goblins to let him into Belatrix's vault. Still, it did prove the bug worked.

Our Hogwarts letters came far later than usual. Fred and George attributed it to Dumbledore having a hard time hiring a new defense teacher. It wasn't surprising with all the trained, combat capable wizards he knew being utilized in the Order.

When my letter did come, in addition to the welcome letter itself and the new book list, a blue and bronze pin with an eagle on it was in the envelope. A prefect pin. There was also a letter detailing the powers and duties involved. It was impossible not to think of Percy. He'd been so much help getting my bearings in those early days at Hogwarts, and consistently more helpful than the Ravenclaw prefects had been. Whatever his current differences with his family, he'd been good to me.

I soon learned that, of the fifth years staying in this house, Harry was the only one who had not been made a prefect. With one boy and one girl from each house chosen at fifth year, it was inevitable some of the Gryffindor boys in our group wouldn't get chosen. Harry seemed to be taking it well, though how much of that was an effort not to spoil this for Ron, I'd likely never know. Mrs. Weasley was overjoyed and celebrating Ron's selection, and while slightly embarrassed, he was clearly enjoying being in the center of attention.

* * *

The next day was a disaster of poor planning. No one was getting up in time, emergency repacking was happening, and to top it off, one member of our escort from the Order was a no show. Sirius took his dog form and filled in over Mrs. Weasley's objections. Finally, James, Lily, Sirius, Lupin, Arthur, Molly, Moody, and Tonks walked our party of students down to King's Cross station and onto Platform 9 3/4.

Once aboard the Hogwarts Express, our party spit up. Harry and Ginny found Neville and Luna while Ron, Hermione, Sloth, and I made our way forward to the prefects' carriage. An unpleasant sight greeted us there. Draco Malfoy and his girlfriend Pansy Parkinson were the new Slytherin prefects.

"There you are," said the Head Boy, a seventh year I didn't know. He ignored the looks of loathing that passed between us and said, "This is your first year as prefects. I'm sure your heads of house will have all sorts of instructions and words of advice for you, but for now, what you have to do is pretty simple."

"Teachers don't ride the train," continued the Head Girl. "So, that means it's up to the prefects to patrol the train and deal with any rule breaking."

"Can we assign punishments for things that happen on the train?" asked Malfoy, a sadistic glee lighting up his face.

"There wouldn't be much point sending ou patrolling if you couldn't," replied the Head Boy. "Mind, since the term hasn't started yet, there's no house points to take away, so you'll have to make due with assigning detentions. Writing lines and such."

"But we can take house points once the term starts?" verified Padima Patil, my fellow Ravenclaw perfect.

"That's right," said the Head Girl. "But your head of house can audit your decisions so don't do it unless you're sure you can justify it."

"Once the feast is over," said the Head Boy, "remember that it's your responsibility to deliver your house's new first years to their dorms. Expect to be escorting them in groups to and from the Great Hall for the first week or so while they get used to the castle. Also, as prefects, you have the right to assign and change your common room password. Make sure your housemates know what it is."

"One duty we won't have to worry about," I said to Padima.

"Actually," said the Head Girl with a smirk, "the Ravenclaw riddle needs to be set daily by one of the prefects."

"Wait, someone actually came up with those riddles?" I asked. "An actual person was to blame for that chicken or the egg riddle with the wrong answer?"

She nodded, snickering, but quickly regained her composure. "Anyway, that's all you need to know for now. You should head out and patrol."

"Before you go, there is one more thing," corrected the Head Boy. "The prefects have a private bathroom you now all have access to in the castle." He explained how to find it and gave us the password before sending us out on patrol.

I walked with Sloth and Loki, glancing in windows as I went. There was a lot of excitement and energy among the new and returning students, but nothing that needed telling off. I stopped off to chat with a nervous group of first year students and let them know what to expect in the sorting ceremony, and that whatever house they ended up in, they could come to me with questions.

"This is the year I clean up the bullying problems Ravenclaw's had since I was sorted," I said to Sloth after we left the first years. "I've finally got the authority to do more than threaten violence if someone's being picked on."

"What was Dumbledore thinking making Draco and Pansy prefects?" asked Sloth. "They're two of the worst bullies in the school."

"It's got to be political," I said. "Not that I have any clue what statement he's trying to make."

"Well, with you and me, he's showing he thinks we belong at Hogwarts and that we can be trusted," said Sloth. "With Malfoy, maybe it's to add legitimacy to him picking us, Ron, and Hermione. No one can say the prefect selections aren't fair without impugning on Lucius Malfoy's son."

"I guess that'll have to do for an explanation," I said, shrugging.

When the train squealed to a stop, Sloth, Loki, and I got to the doors and started directing people. Ron and Hermione along with Ernie Macmillan and Padima Patil joined us in directing second years and above to the carriages and first years down toward the boats. Professor Grubbly-Plank was leading the first years down to the lake. Hagrid must have still been off on his assignment from Dumbledore to treat with the giants.

Draco and Pansy, rather than helping, flashed their prefect badges and shoved other students out of the way to claim a carriage for themselves, Crabbe and Goyle. I felt Sloth's hand on my arm when I pressed my fingers together and raised it toward them.

"Blowing up the carriage'll hurt the thestrals," she said. "Even if they did go out of their way to make sure no one innocent would be hurt."

I laughed it off, and Hermione promised to report Malfoy's behavior. We found our way to carriages and rode up to the castle proper.

* * *

Author's comments:  
In trying to stick to canon characterization, some things always cause me trouble. Coming up with even semi-reasonable explanations for most of what Dumbledore does is a major pain half the time. Ah well, on to cleaning up the school's bullying problem!


	35. Chapter 46: Following Rules and Enforcin

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 46) Following the Rules and Enforcing Them  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

At the sorting ceremony in the Great Hall, the hat was taken out to its stool and began its new song. This time it went beyond the explanation of the favored traits of each house and issued a dire warning only a fool would ignore.

"In times of old when I was new  
And Hogwarts barely started  
The founders of our noble school  
Thought never to be parted.  
United by a common goal  
They had the selfsame yearning  
To make the world's best magic school  
And pass along their learning.  
'Together we will build and teach!'  
The four good friends decided.  
And never did they dream that they  
Might someday be divided.  
For were there such good friends anywhere  
As Slytherin and Gryffindor?  
Unless it was the second pair  
Of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw?  
So how could it have gone so wrong?  
How could such friendships fail?  
Why I was there and I can tell  
The whole sad sorry tale.  
Said Slytherin, 'We'll teach just those  
Who's ancestry is purest.'  
Said Ravenclaw, 'We'll teach those who's  
Intelligence is surest.'  
Said Gryffindor, 'We'll teach all those  
With brave deeds to their names.'  
Said Hufflepuff, 'I'll teach the lot  
And treat them just the same.'  
Those differences caused little strife  
When first they came to light  
For each of the four founders had  
A house in which they might  
Take only those they wanted, so,  
For instance Slytherin  
Took only pureblood wizards  
Of great cunning just like him,  
And only those of sharpest mind  
Were taught by Ravenclaw  
While the bravest and the boldest  
Went to daring Gryffindor.  
Good Hufflepuff, she took the rest  
And taught them all she knew  
Thus the houses and their founders  
Retained friendships firm and true.  
So Hogwarts worked in harmony  
For several happy years,  
But then discord crept among us  
Feeding on our faults and fears.  
The houses that like pillars four  
Had once held up our school  
Now turned upon each other and  
Divided sought to rule.  
And for a while it seemed the school  
Must meet an early end  
What with dueling and with fight  
And clash of friend on friend.  
And at last there came a morning  
When old Slytherin departed  
And though the fighting died out  
He left us quite downhearted.  
And never since the founders four  
Were whittled down to three  
Have the houses been united  
As they once were meant to be.  
And now the Sorting Hat is here  
And now you know the score.  
I sort you into houses  
Because that is what I'm for.  
But this year I'll go further  
Listen closely to my song.  
Though condemned I am to split you  
Still I worry that it's wrong.  
Though I must fulfill my duty  
And must quarter every year  
Still I wonder whether sorting  
May not bring the end I fear  
Oh know the perils, read the signs  
The warning history shows  
For our Hogwarts is in danger  
From external, deadly foes.  
And we must unite insider her  
Or we'll crumble from within.  
I have told you, I have warned you  
Let the sorting now begin."

The millennium old intelligent artifact, forged by the united efforts of the four greatest witches and wizards of all time, that had examined the innermost character of every witch and wizard in Britain, had issued a warning. Its entire reason for existing was the sorting, and yet what it foresaw with its vast insight and experience had it seriously questioning that very purpose. Disaster was coming in one form or another if the enmity and mistrust between the houses could not be bridged.

I was so distracted by the hat's warning that I missed the sorting itself in the course of pondering how to act on it. I decided that was probably a good thing, since the hat didn't like the idea of separating us at all. It seemed perhaps Helga Hufflepuff had the right idea all those centuries ago. Teach the lot and treat them just the same.

While I dug in to the feast, I continued to ponder this hardest puzzle yet. Ultimately, I realized the obvious fact that I couldn't heal a millennium old rift myself. I would need help, especially with the Slytherins, who I had no real contact with outside Malfoy and his bullying friends. I'd have to make time to talk to Snape after the year's first potions class.

Finally, with everyone full from the feast, Dumbledore rose to make the start of term announcements. He got as far as introducing Dolores Umbridge, a squat, high voiced witch who would be teaching defense this year. She interrupted Dumbledore's continuing announcements with a dull, rambling, contradictory speech of her own. Rather than fight it, Dumbledore sat down immediately and listened intently as Umbridge rambled about progress and its opposite for far too long. Finally, she finished talking, Dumbledore finished his announcements, then we were all dismissed to our dorms.

I started to help gather up the newly sorted Ravenclaws when Professor Flitwick came down from the staff table and approached me. Professor Umbridge was following him. He didn't look at all pleased.

"Padima, can you please take the first years up on your own tonight? I need to speak to Marcus in my office about a scheduling matter," said Professor Flitwick. He then proceeded to lead me down to his office. Loki trotted at my side and Umbridge trailed along behind.

When we arrived, Professor Flitwick sat down and indicated Professor Umbridge and I should do so as well. "Marcus, as you heard at the feast, this is Dolores Umbridge. In addition to being our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, she is also the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, and as such a representative of the Ministry."

"Thank you for that introduction, Professor Flitwick," said Umbridge in the same honeyed tones she'd used when she interrupted Dumbledore. "As you've probably guessed, this is about the time turner the Ministry has generously allowed you the use of for hte past two years. I'm afraid our generosity has reached its limit. You will need to hand it back in now."

"Why?" I asked, looking from Professor Flitwick to Professor Umbridge. "Have I done something wrong?" I'd certainly abused the device, using it for purposes well outside getting to my classes, but there was no point admitting that.

"I'm afraid it isn't a matter of what you've done or not done," said Umbridge in her falsely sweet voice. "Your use of the time turner has always been at the pleasure of the Ministry, and between your half-breed status and the outrageous lies you spread around last year, the Ministry is no longer pleased."

I considered telling her no. The device was valuable beyond measure, and I'd always planned on stealing it when the time came to return to my own world to make sure I arrived at the right time. If I refused, however, that would be the ned of my Hogwarts education, and that outweighed the value of the tiny hourglass. I took the chain from around my neck and placed the time turner in Umbridge's outstretched hand. I closed my fingers around hers and looked her in the eye.

"I'm not the least bit ashamed of the fact that I'm not entirely human," I said, staring with my slitted purple eyes, "but anyone who wants to call me a liar had best be able to back that up."

Umbridge smiled and said, "You've earned yourself a detention for backtalk, Mr. Oren. I would advise you not forget you are speaking to a teacher."

"Marcus and I need to discuss how this impacts his schedule," said Professor Flitwick. "I'm sure you have lesson plans to finalize. I won't keep you while we discuss his classes."

"My lesson plans have been ready for some time," said Umbridge, "but I will need to return this to the Ministry for safekeeping. We wouldn't want any students to be tempted to steal it." She left the room with my time turner clutched firmly in her hand.

"You'd do well not to provoke her, Marcus," advised Flitwick. "Fudge had her assigned here as his personal representative, and he's still not convinced of your and Harry's story last year. Push her too far and you might get worse than detention."

"Maybe I should get myself sent to Azkaban on purpose," I mused. "Kill all the dementors there and force the Ministry to use reasonable guards. Especially after that pair attacked Harry over the summer."

"I know you're angry, and I sympathize, but we really do need to talk about your schedule. If we'd known they were going to take away your time turner, we'd have tried to arrange classes differently, but since it was sprung on us at the last minute, what classes you'll have to drop-"

"Drop?"

"I'm afraid so. Muggle Studies will have to be one of them. It's scheduled time is the same as Charms, and that's a required class this year. Other than that, you'll have to choose between Arithmancy and Divination."

"I can keep up an independent study of Arithmancy," I mused. "I can get the homework from Hermione and study from the book. I don't think I can do that for Divination. I can still sit my OWLs even if I drop the class for the term, can't I?"

Professor Flitwick smiled. "You can at that. I'll have a new schedule drawn up for you tomorrow."

Getting up to leave, I turned and said, "Thanks for separating us before I could get in any more trouble."

* * *

When I got to the door to Ravenclaw tower, I was in no mood for that riddle lock and just walked through the closed door using Sloth's Ultimate Escape. Not bothering to so much as look at anyone, I marched up to my dorm and flopped face first onto the bed.

At breakfast the next morning, school owls delivered my new schedule from Professor Flitwick and a pink slip of paper form Umbridge telling me my detention would be in her office after dinner. In preparation for the OWLs, I had double sessions of each of my core classes scheduled this year. Even accounting for the two dropped classes, this promised to be my busiest year yet, academically speaking.

Mercifully, my first class was Transfiguration. We were working on vanishing charms. Destroying matter was a kind of equivalency violation I'd rarely attempted before. Due to the universe being cosmically unfair, violating equivalent exchange in that way still expended red stone energy rather than recharging it. Still, once I had it, it became clear I was going to have an easy next few weeks, since the plan was to vanish increasingly complicated creatures while from an alchemic point of view, they were all made of the same kind of matter.

In Herbology, we again moved up to more dangerous plants with more interesting properties. I'd almost forgotten my outrage from the previous day, but Divination brought it right back. I had to tell Sloth and the others what had happened and ask the Gryffindors to ask Hermione for her Arithmancy notes for me.

Worse, this year we were doing dream interpretation. With my time turner gone, I'd been counting on making up for my missed classes by pulling all nighters, but the dream journal Trelawney assigned meant I would have to actually sleep each night. That left me with only two time saving cheats. My ability to assimilate knowledge from written material without reading it using red stones, and the fact that I didn't have to eat.

I left Divination hating Umbridge more than ever. Fortune once again smiled on me when my next class turned out to be potions. After warning us that he would only be taking the best students in his NEWT level potions class next year, he had us brew a potion called the Draught of Peace, which soothes nerves, calms tempers, and reduces anxiety. It was just what I needed going into my detention with Umbridge. I pocketed a flask of my brew before packing up and heading down to dinner.

When I checked in with Hermione, she was outraged on my behalf over my being forced to drop classes. Not only did she give me a copy of her notes, but she promised to let me use her marked homework as a grading key for mine, and to copy down the test papers in Arithmancy for me. I also learned I wasn't the only one who had detention with Umbridge. Harry had talked back to her in class and earned a week of detentions. I expressed sympathy and condolences before heading down to her office to get this over with. I sent Loki off with Sloth.

"Good evening, Mr. Oren," said Umbridge.

"Good evening," I said serenely.

"Well, sit down," she said, directing me toward a small table with a piece of blank parchment on it. When I sat down, she continued, "You are going to be doing some lines for me, Mr. Oren."

I shrugged and bent down to get out a quill from my bag. Before I found it, Umbridge handed me a black quill, saying, "No, not with your quill. You're going to be using a rather special quill of mine. Here you are. Oh, you won't be needing ink," she added when I retrieved a bottle of ink from my bag. Again, I shrugged and put my ink away.

"I want you to write, 'I must not tell lies,'" said Umbridge.

I began to write. The words appeared in glistening red blood. At the same time, the back of my hand was cut open in a pattern identical to the handwriting on the page. Then, before I'd decided whether to bother regenerating the cut, it closed on its own. I repeated the process and saw it happen again as before. Then I let out a soft giggle.

It wasn't the response Umbridge was expecting. She had been watching me closely as I tried out her quill, and when I laughed she said, "Is something wrong?"

"No," I said. "Just had a funny thought."

"And what might that be?"

"I've been tortured by experts," I said. "How many pages am I doing?"

"As many as it takes for it to sink in," said Umbridge flustered.

I got back to writing, not bothering to look up. After an hour or so, the draught of peace keeping me calm began to wear off. By that point, I had my hand cut open and healed enough times to determine that the healing magic tied to the quill was less than perfect. Repeated use of the quill left the tissue inflamed and prone to scarring.

I was used to pain. I'd done worse to myself experimenting with my healing process over the summer. But she was trying in earnest ot torture me, and most people didn't have my pain tolerance. This woman was evil. I was sorely tempted to snap the fingers of my left hand and burn her to ashes with flame alchemy, but killing Fudge's representative would mean declaring war on the Ministry of Magic, and I wasn't there yet.

After several hours, she looked over the scarring on the back of my right hand. It overlapped with the flame alchemy array there, rendering it useless. She didn't seem satisfied, but she dismissed me regardless. Once I was out of her office, I used the array on my back to properly repair the skin on the hack of my hand. A wave of blue light passed over my hand and it was again unblemished, as though the evening's detention had never happened.

The next day, I got a taste of her teaching style. It proved a far more effective form of torture than her cursed quill had been. The class consisted, in its entirety, of silently reading the remarkably poor textbook that I'd already assimilated. Meanwhile, she proved herself a patronizing control freak, demanding synchronized greetings at the start of class. It was actually more boring and useless than Quirrell's had been, since at least then, I'd been able to treat the period like a study hall and use the time to work out how to emulate the jinxes in the book.

Fortunately, that afternoon was Care of Magical Creatures. Even with Hagrid gone, the subject was interesting. This time we were studying bowtruckles, a kind of fairy being that nested in trees who's wood was suitable for wands. Draco tried to ruin things for us by insulting Hagrid, but he wasn't even creative about it.

* * *

Finally able to take care of the homework I'd accumulated thanks to that detention, I put my things away and had a look around the common room. No one was going to start in on their bullying in front of a prefect. I briefly considered patrolling under an invisibility cloak, but then I got a better idea. The tiny metal bug I'd used ot listen in on Order meetings was well suited to the kind of autonomous surveillance I needed. I made a few dozen and had them posted around the school. A couple were assigned to each dorm and common room, with the rest set to watch any grouping of students.

An hour after I sent the bugs out, one returned to me. Landing on my fingertip, it spread its wings and projected the image of a Ravenclaw sixth year shoving and stealing the book bag of a Slytherin second year. My bug had followed the bully and seen where he tossed the bag into a trash can.

Leaving the common room, I followed my bug as it flew down the hall. Fishing the bag out of the trash can, I sought out and found the sixth year responsible. When he saw me carrying the bag, his eyes widened.

"You've lost Ravenclaw ten points," I told him. "Yes, I saw what you did. Now head straight back to the common room and write, 'I will not be a bully' a hundred times. And I'll know if you tried to cheat using magic."

"But-but he was a Slytherin. Son of a Death Eater," he said sputtering.

"Were you even listening to the hat?" I demanded. "It doesn't matter one bit what his father did. You're the bad guy here. If you or anyone else pulls anything like this again, you'll wish Filch was the one who caught you at it. Now, get out of my sight."

Once he'd gone, I headed for Snape's office. I'd been meaning to talk to him about the hat's song anyway, but things had come up. Now I could return the bag and have that chat in one go.

"Come in," said Snape when I knocked on the door. "Oren? What do you want?"

"One of the Ravenclaws stole this from one of your second years," I said, setting the bag on his desk. "I've already taken house points and assigned a punishment."

"Well, this is unexpected," said Snape. "Usually the prefects are disinclined to punish members of their own house."

"Ravenclaw's had a bullying problem since my first year," I said, irritated. "Nothing's going to change if we won't police our own."

"Let's be honest, shall we?" said Snape. "Ravenclaw may be your house, but the only ones in this school you'd call your own are Potter and his little gang. Will you be so quick to police their rule breaking?"

"If they start bullying people, I'm coming down even harder on them," I said firmly. "I'm their friend because they don't pull that sort of thing."

"Of course not," said Snape sarcastically. "It's not as if you would ever be party to helping cover up an illegal dragon, or be involved in a club that hasn't been sanctioned by the faculty."

"There's a difference between ignoring arbitrary rules and turning a blind eye to pointless bullying and cruelty."

"But if there's a point to it, you can't find any reason to object," Snape shot back.

"What has gotten into you?" I asked.

He looked down at his hands,which were shaking. With visible effort, he mastered himself once again, then said, "What you did at the end of last year has left me off balance. Point of fact, it's been building since the year before when you and Potter learned Black was innocent. Now, Lily is alive and James Potter with her. It's brought some difficult memories to the surface. Memories that make my task of undermining the Dark Lord more difficult."

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked, stunned at his openness.

"As you have no doubt noticed using your time turner, there's no changing what's happened in the past."

"Look, if spying on Voldemort-"

"Do not say his name!" exclaimed Snape with urgency.

"Okay, it has been four years," I said with mounting irritation. "Why? What is it about saying the name of the guy you're already spying on and who's already trying as hard as he can to kill me and my friends that makes you so worried?"

Snape pursed his lips, then tested the waters. "The headmaster doesn't want this spread around."

"I can keep a secret if there's a good reason to. Is there?"

"It's called a taboo. An old and powerful magic. He has made it so that whenever his name is spoken, he will know where. Speaking the name will also shatter many forms of magical protection. If you speak his name, you make yourself vulnerable and draw his attention in one act."

"Why is Dumbledore encouraging people to use it then?" I demanded.

"He considers the fear engendered by not speaking his name a greater threat than the practical concern."

"He's an idiot," I said firmly.

A smile curled along Snape's lips. "Idiot or not, he represents the most powerful threat to the Dark Lord's dominance over wizarding Britain."

"Tom," I said. "If he's made aware any time a taboo word is spoke, it can't be one as commonly spoken as his incredibly common real name. There's no awe saying 'Dark Lord' and no fear like saying 'You-Know-Who' or 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.' Just Tom."

"Is it your intent to drive the Dark Lord into a fury?" asked Snape, still smiling.

"People make mistakes when they're angry," I said.

A look passed across Snape's face. It was as though I'd slapped him. His smile was gone. He now looked contemplative. "Yes, yes they do. Tom it is."

"I'm telling Harry," I said. "He's Tom's primary target. I'll tell him not to spread it around. We'll make like our main goal is mocking his muggle heritage."

"Dumbledore is an idiot," said Snape after a long moment. "That would be more effective at undermining his base of blood supremacists and diminishing fear of him than using the name and title he made up for himself. What did you say you did in the world you came from?"

"I was a State Alchemist," I said. "It's a military position. I held the rank of Major for most of my career. I quit shortly after being promoted to Lieutenant Colonel."

"Why is a high ranking military officer attending a boarding school?" asked Snape. It was a genuine question. There was no hint of disbelief in his voice.

"I really am here to learn," I said. "My world no doubt has witches and wizards in it too, but we don't have a tradition to train them like you have here. I want to bring back what I learn here to my world and make my world better with that knowledge."

"In the meantime, you're paying for what you learn by teaching the Weasley boy alchemy."

"And helping you fight Tom," I added. "So, what is it that's been bothering you? I answered your questions."

He just stared at me for a long moment. I could feel him probing at my occlumency barriers. Fair enough that he wanted a guarantee I could keep secret whatever was on his mind. I ran him around in circles, each time he seemed to penetrate my thoughts, I inserted a memory of myself saying, "You aren't in yet." Eventually, the attempts stopped.

"Let us just say, I am having trouble putting some things that happened in school behind me. Working with James Potter and Sirius Black is bringing back memories of why I joined the Death Eaters in the first place."

"You should know he's going to lose," I said. "We've got an angle on at least one of his remaining horcruxes."

"I'm not going back to being his loyal servant," snapped Snape. "What's wrong is that my emotions aren't fully under control, and that makes it easier for Tom to figure out I'm not on his side."

"What's your exit strategy if he finds you out?" I asked.

Snape let out a breath and said, "I'm tortured then killed. There's no backing out of what I'm doing."

After thinking a moment, I took out a soul coin, clapped, and altered the array on the back. Then I put it on Snape's desk. "Meet your new exit strategy. If you get found out, press this to your skin. It'll painlessly remove your soul from your body. Another member of the Order can bring it back to me, Ron, or Sloth,and we can put you back in a body."

He stared at the coin for a long moment, then picked it up. Putting it in his pocket, Snape asked, "Is there anything else?"

"I did want to talk to you about the Sorting Hat's song," I said. "Interhouse unity makes sense, but with people like Malfoy around, I don't know who in Slytherin I can reach out to. Do you have any ideas?"

"I do, but it would mean giving up an advantage you've enjoyed over the rest of the student body for years."

* * *

"Your doing?" asked Sloth, holding up one of my metal bugs outside the Great Hall before breakfast.

"I figured we can't be everywhere all the time, and this way we'll be alerted to rule breaking without us having to be there to see it," I explained.

"You'd think after losing your time turner, you'd be less interested in making more work for yourself," she replied. "Not to mention me."

"I can tell them not to alert you," I offered, "but the way I see it, if everyone knows they can't get away with things, it'll be less work in the long run."

"Fair point," she said. "How're you managing the homework so far?"

"It's taking up most of my time," I admitted. "I'm going to have to schedule it carefully if I want to be able to keep up with our fencing practice and Ron's alchemy training."

"And what about us?"

"I haven't forgotten," I said with a smile. "I've come up with some ideas to take back our red stone farming time."

That evening, I took Sloth down to the Chamber of Secrets, past the thousand year old basilisk, through the unremarkable wall at the back, and into a small garden filled with Philosopher's Flowers, lit by magical grow lights. I transmuted a dozen suits of armor and animated them, passing them gardening tools.

"The can tend the flowers, harvest the stones, and even mend the plants with a red stone powered array on the gardening tools," I said. "All we need to do is drop off the ingredients and pick up the finished stones."

"This would be really useful in Liore," said Sloth, seeing the process in action.

I nodded. "Especially since they double as extra security."

"Nice," said Sloth. "We can even leave them working over the summer, and put together another batch back home. Any intruders like Crouch get taken out by them and our place stays secure."

I nodded. "I can put my mind to time saving when I need to."

"I'm impressed," said Sloth. "There's just one more thing."

"What's that?" I asked.

"This homework is going to bury me! Help me!"

* * *

Author's comments:  
There was no way Umbridge was going to leave the time turner in Greed's hands. And between his new prefect duties, preparing for OWLs, and his intention to try to bridge the divide between the houses, Greed's going to have a very busy year indeed.


	36. Chapter 48: Secret Conspiracies

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 48) Secret Conspiracies  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Once we adapted to the increased workload of our OWL year, the rest of the first week passed relatively uneventfully. I'd been able to verify that Harry's detentions had been the same as mine. I mended the back of his hand with a red stone. There was no sense in letting her leave a permanent scar. Ron had tried out for, and got, a position on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The keeper position vacated by the former captain, Olliver Wood who'd graduated year before last.

Ron seemed genuinely surprised when I talked to him about scheduling his alchemy lessons around his new Quidditch duties. He seemed to have gotten the idea we were done now that he'd performed a human transmutation, seen the Gate, and could now clap transmute. I explained that there was still another year of material to cover.

Daily fencing lessons were out this year. With all the extra work assigned, we'd have to drop down to weekends only. I wasn't happy about giving even that much, and if I still had my time turner, I would've insisted we use it. As I didn't, I was forced to concede there were only so many hours in a day.

My dream journal for Trelawney was filled with being watched by Moody's magic eye and Umbridge giving actually useful lessons on horcruxes. In Divination, I was surprised to see Umbridge observing Trelawney's lesson. Harry quickly hissed a parseltongue explanation. Umbridge had been appointed "Hogwarts High Inquisitor" by Fudge. It was a new position that let her observe other teachers and sack any who weren't performing to standard.

Umbridge's presence was an unwelcome irritant, bringing everyone out of the semi-trance state Trelawney cultivated in order to help everyone perform at their best in her class. Even she was shaken by Umbridge following behind her as she went through her lessons. When Umbridge demanded Trelawney predict something, she waffled before declaring the defense professor was in great danger. Given what had happened to her predecessors, it was a good bet even without second sight.

That evening, Ron and I went down to the alchemy lab. Once there, I triple checked our security. While I did, Ron complained about a letter he'd received the previous night. Apparently, Percy was trying to convince Ron to disassociate himself from me and Harry. That really stung with how much I'd liked Percy and valued his advice while we were in school together.

"Okay, Ron," I said when I was sure nothing could observe us, "we still have some applications for red stones to go over and there are additional details about homunculi and the Gate I want to cover this year, but first, I think it's time you learn about the Philosopher's Stone."

"You explained about it in first year," said Ron. "It lets you do alchemy without a circle and lets you make homunculi without seeing the Gate and losing a limb."

"Those are just a couple of uses the Stone can be put to. It can also be used to fully raise someone from the dead as a normal human being, even if you don't have their soul. It has been theorized to be capable of turning soulless homunculi human. But what I want to talk about today is how it's made.

"Human transmutation is the ultimate taboo in alchemy, but the Philosopher's Stone is a step beyond that for those who know the secret. Most alchemists who learn either quit their research or go insane. Entire civilizations have turned their backs on alchemy on mass after learning how this works. You may decide you want to take Percy's advice about me once you know what I've done."

"Do you have to be so dramatic about every single thing?" asked Ron, rolling his eyes. "I've stuck with you this long, and I didn't back out after getting my arm ripped off. Just get on with it already."

"Alright," I said, drawing an array on the blackboard. "Red stones are a weaker refinement of the concept of an alchemy amplifier. They're a million times weaker than a true Stone. They were developed because the price for creating a stone is measured in human lives. Not tens, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of people need ot die, their life energy captured and wrung out of their bodies by this array, which is drawn around a city."

Ron's jaw dropped. "You-?"

"I made one," I confirmed. "The city I transmuted was going to be destroyed a few seconds later by an atomic bomb, a muggle weapon, and I decided it would be wasteful for those people to die and not get anything in return. That was the Philosopher's Stone I carried with me into this world, that is the Stone Tom tried to steal in our first year, that is the Stone that was drained of its power in the graveyard last year when Petigrew made me throw it up."

"You could've killed everyone at the World Cup," said Ron, awed and more than a little frightened.

"Yes I could," I said. "Tom would if he knew how."

"He would," agreed Ron. "I'm sorry."

"About what?" I asked.

"Well, if anything deserves getting dramatic about, it's this."

* * *

The next day, Umbridge spent most of her inspection of Professor Grubly-Plank asking pointed questions about Hagrid. Once classes were done for the day, I met up with the others. Hermione handed me her graded Arithmancy homework, and I set to work checking my answers. As I worked, a conversation sprung up in parseltongue.

"I reckon you two should complain to McGonagall and Flitwick about Umbridge and her detentions," said Ron. "They'd flip out if they knew about what was happening."

"Yeah, they probably would," said Harry. "And how long do you reckon it'd take Umbridge to pass another decree saying anyone who complains about the High Inquisitor gets sacked immediately?"

"She's an awful woman," said Hermione. "We've got to do something about her."

"Killing her would just draw down more scrutiny and trouble from the Ministry," I said. "We can't do that until we're ready to declare war on them."

"War on the Ministry?" asked Ginny. "Isn't that exactly what they're afraid of? Why they stuck us with her in the first place?"

"I'm not talking about killing her," said Hermione, exasperated, "but we do need to do something about what a dreadful teacher she is, and about how we're not going to learn any defense from her at all."

"She was a political appointment," said Sloth. "Getting her removed without killing her just isn't going to happen."

"Well," said Hermione, "you know, I was thinking today. I was thinking that maybe the time's come when we should just... just do it ourselves."

"Do what ourselves?" asked Harry.

"Well, learn Defense Against the Dark Arts ourselves," replied Hermione.

"This isn't like Arithmancy where we have a good textbook we can just follow along with for an independent study," I said, glancing up.

"And we're already doing so much extra work we're backed up on homework again," said Ron. "And it's only the second week!"

"But this is so much more important than homework!" said Hermione, to surprised stares all around.

"If Fudge makes it so we don't know how to protect ourselves out of paranoia now that Tom's back," said Neville, "this is going to be a short war. You can bet the Death Eaters' kids are getting private lessons."

"Or it isn't paranoia at all and Fudge is on Tom's side," suggested Luna.

We paused to consider that for a long moment before Hermione pressed on. "Anyway, I agree we've gone past the stage where we can just learn things out of books. We need a teacher, a proper one who can show us how to use the spells and correct us if we're going wrong."

"If you're talking about Lupin-" began Harry.

"No, no, I'm not talking about Lupin," said Hermione. "He's too busy with the Order and anyway, the most we could see him is during Hogsmeade weekends and that's not nearly often enough."

"Who then?" asked Harry.

"Isn't it obvious? I'm talking about you, Harry."

"About me what?"

"I'm talking about you teaching us Defense Against the Dark Arts."

It took some convincing before Harry was on board with the idea. It was clear all the Order members were otherwise occupied except Sirius, who couldn't risk leaving the Order's headquarters. When Harry suggested Hermione, she revealed he'd actually scored better than her in the class whenever they'd had a competent teacher. When he suggested me, I reminded him I couldn't actually do magic and that he'd had to rescue me from the graveyard last year. Ultimately, Harry was convinced, and we moved on to working out the details.

This wasn't going to be just our group. Hermione had suggested and I immediately agreed that anyone who wanted to learn should have the opportunity. The plan was for each of us to sound out as many people as we could, and arrange to meet in the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade on the first Hogsmeade weekend. We'd explain the plan to them there and arrange the details of meeting once everyone was officially agreed.

* * *

I spent the next few weeks streamlining my schedule. I'd managed to balance my coursework, fitting homework into the hours between when I had to be in Ravenclaw tower and when I had to go to bed. Ron's Quidditch practices were irregular, but we managed to squeeze in an hour a week for his alchemy lessons. I'd stopped eating and bathing so I could dedicate the time to my Arithmancy and Muggle Studies work, and simply resumed cleaning myself with alchemy. As I predicted, after an initial flurry of docked house points and detentions, my bugs had managed to root out much of the bullying problem.

I'd managed to cultivate a reputation for being evenhanded through my prefect work, which gave me the opportunity to approach the Slytherin students Snape had identified as being on the outs with Draco and his gang of Death Eater wannabes. When they arrived at the Hog's Head, the seediest bar in Hogsmeade, their presence elicited the expected response.

"What are they doing here?" demanded Ron.

"I invited them," I said firmly. "We agreed this was for anyone who wanted to learn."

"Yeah, but they're Slytherins," said Ron. "Why would we want to make them better at cursing us?"

"It's okay, Ron," said Harry. "It's not like he invited Draco."

"You can't possibly believe a full quarter of the wizard population is irredeemably evil, Ron," said Sloth.

"Look, if we're not wanted-" began one of the Slytherins.

"You can stay," said Harry firmly.

There were additional questions and exclamations as other students drifted in. Harry had to repeatedly bring them in line. Impressively, he silenced Fred and George Weasley's objections with a look before a sound came out of their mouths.

Hermione opened the meeting and explained the plan, that we'd meet to learn proper defense from Harry once a week. The Quidditch players insisted on scheduling the meetings around their practices, but other than some token questions about what Harry really had to teach, which were quickly answered, there were no objections to the core plan. Enthusiasm for the plan picked up further when we explained that Umbridge was here to deliberately sabotage our defense training because Fudge was afraid Dumbledore wanted to use us as an army against the Ministry.

"Well, the other thing to decide is where we're going to meet," said Hermione.

"Salazar Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets," I supplied. "We've been using it for secret training since we found it, and it's got all the space and security we could ask for. Besides, I'll bet that's what Slytherin would've wanted it used for anyway."

"You mean you really do know where hte Chamber of Secrets is?" asked one of the Slytherins. "Between that and the parseltongue thing, how are you not in our house, Harry?"

"I told the hat I didn't want to," said Harry. "I wasn't sharing a dorm with Draco Malfoy."

"That git cost us Potter," muttered one of the Slytherins angrily. "Dumbledore's favorite, best seeker in the school, and the Boy Who lived, and he's not in Slytherin because we're stuck with Malfoy."

"We'll send a message round to everybody when we've got a time for the first meeting. I-I think everybody should write their name down, just so we know who was here," said Hermione, taking a quill and blank parchment from her bag. "But I also think that we all ought to agree not to shout about what we're doing. So, if you do sign, you're agreeing not to tell Umbridge, or anybody else, about what we're up to."

Again, there was some hesitation, notably none from the Slytherins, and ultimately everyone signed. Back at the castle, Harry coordinated with the other Quidditch players under the guise of working out practice times, and worked out a time for our meeting. Meanwhile, I prepared a set of keys that would speak the parseltongue open command for the Chamber of Secrets only when i the hands of the person I handed the key to. If they were stolen, they wouldn't do the thief any good.

* * *

On Monday, a notice board was up in the Ravenclaw common room. The Ministry had passed a new decree. All student groups were suspended pending Umbridge's approval. Being part of an unapproved group was punishable by expulsion. Umbridge obviously knew what we were up to.

I promised the Ravenclaws who'd attended that I'd talk to Harry and get back to them as soon as possible. It was agreed that we were going forward with this anyway. We spread the time, the keys, and the need to visit Moaning Myrtle's bathroom.

Everyone made it safely to the Chamber of Secrets for the first meeting. Once everyone was there, Hermione again started things off, getting everyone present to elect a leader. Harry was agreed to unanimously. Hopefully, the legitimacy would help keep backtalk during training to a minimum. After that, she insisted we come up with a name. Mercifully, this didn't turn into a repeat of the interminable house elf rights group naming debates, and we quickly settled on Dumbledore's Army as a snub at the Ministry. DA for short when we might risk being overheard.

Finally, the meat of the meeting began with Harry pairing us all off to practice disarming spells on one another. Once in the swing of things, Harry again proved to be an excellent teacher. There was visible improvement from just one session. At the end of the session, Harry used the Marauder's Map to guide us all safely back to our common rooms.

After a few sessions, Ron and Hermione had made some improvements to my keys, replacing them with inconspicuous looking gold galleon coins. Ron had reapplied the parseltongue array and encased it inside the coin where it wouldn't be visible. Meanwhile, Hermione had magically linked the coins so when the serial numbers on one coin changed, all the others would change to match and the coins would get warm to tell us when they changed. The plan was for Harry to set the serial number on his coin to the date of the next meeting.

Things were finally going smoothly again. I was keeping up with my classwork. Alchemy lessons with Ron were progressing such that he'd know everything I had to teach him by the OWLs. Our illegal defense society was improving in combat ability by leaps and bounds under Harry. And I still had plenty of free time to spend with Sloth. The only negative was that Sir Nicholas had stopped our fencing lessons in compliance with the new educational decree, and none of us were going to ask Umbridge to reinstate it.

Sirius had contacted Harry using the Gryffindor fire to pass along a warning about our secret defense group. We'd been overheard during our initial meeting in the Hog's Head by the wizard who was tailing Harry. Ron, and the rest of his siblings were forbidden from participating by Mrs. Weasley. They ignored it, of course. Harry's parents were more supportive, though they insisted he make sure he wasn't caught. Sirius also delivered a reminder that owls were being intercepted and that we shouldn't risk putting anything in writing.

* * *

Things continued smoothly until Gryffindor's first Quidditch match of the season against Slytherin. Draco had worked out Ron didn't fly particularly well when under pressure. To capitalize on this, he'd organized the Slytherins into singing a song mocking Ron and his goalkeeping abilities. It worked. Ron choked badly, missing a number of easy saves. Gryffindor managed to pull off a win only thanks to Harry catching the Snitch before they were too far behind.

Unfortunately, once the game was over, Draco managed to provoke Harry and the Weasley twins into attacking him. The result was Draco covered in easily healed scrapes and bruises and Harry and the twins banned from Quidditch by Umbridge using her new authority granted by Fudge to dish out, remove, and alter school punishments. The Quidditch ban was disappointing for them, but the real problem was the effect this had on the DA.

The Gryffindors were practically at the Slytherin's throats over what happened. I had to snap and raise a wall of flames between them at our next meeting to stop the shouting and threats of violence from both sides. I let the flames die down and the conversation died down to a more reasonable volume.

"I thought we were supposed to be on the same side," accused one of the Gryffindors.

"In studying defense, not Quidditch," retorted the Slytherin. "Do Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff have to throw their games to our leader's house too?"

"Of course not, but you didn't have to join Malfoy chanting against another DA member!"

"This is a secret society! When we're not down here, we can't let on we're allies!"

"Oh, so it was to keep your cover?"

"It was a Quidditch game! And besides, Weasley really was lousy."

"Shut up!" yelled Harry.

"You tell him, Harry!" said the Gryffindor.

"Both of you, shut up!" clarified Harry. Everyone fell silent to hear him out. "I want to be mad at Umbridge, and Fudge, and Malfoy! I want us all to be on the same side, not trying to kill each other. Out there, you do what you have to do, but in here, we're all on the same side.

"You lot went along with Malfoy's plan, and you helped him mess with Ron. I don't like that, but we've all got bigger problems. And as long as we remember we're on the same side when it really matters, against Tom, I can live with it."

"Look, mate, I know I played rubbish," said Ron. "They're not wrong saying the obvious."

"And we lost our tempers with Malfoy all on our own," said George.

"Mind you," said Fred, they're also right about needing to keep our cover that we don't like each other. And everyone'll be expecting us to be looking for payback."

"As long as we're still on the same side when it counts?" ventured the Slytherin who'd been speaking up before.

I never learned what Fred and George did in retaliation, but it didn't put the Slytherins off attending DA meetings. The tensions dropped bit by bit, and Harry managed to get his lesson plan back on track.

In the meantime, Hagrid had returned from treating with the giants. News about the war effort helped focus everyone. The giants had sided with Voldemort. Hagrid had been successfully treating with the chieftain, offering a brand of ever burning fire conjured by Dumbledore, an indestructible goblin made helmet, and a roll of dragon skin as gifts to prove our side's good intentions, but a change in leadership saw a pro Death Eater chieftain put in charge, and Hagrid had been forced to flee. He was hopeful that another regime change might come, but I suspected that hope was bravado for our sakes.

* * *

Umbridge inspected the first Care of Magical Creatures class we had with Hagrid. He was giving a lesson on thestrals. Throughout the class, she spoke to Hagrid as though he were too stupid to understand common English and asked leading questions that Draco and his cronies were all too happy to supply the answers to. She was gunning for Hagrid.

It wasn't surprising. Hagrid was one of Dumbledore's staunchest supporters, as evidenced by him returning from the giants covered in bruises and scrapes worse than I'd ever seen on the man. He also had a record the Ministry could use against him. Given that last time, they'd sent him to Azkaban, I was fast approaching the limits of my tolerance for Umbridge and for Fudge's regime.

My mind ticked through options as I helped the other prefects set up the Christmas decorations. I had to force myself to dump all variations of "kill her" into a single category to be evaluated as a whole. The problem was, eliminating her would just cause Fudge to replace her. I could kill him, but that would mean fighting my way through his Aurors and potentially crippling any ability of magical Britain to resist Voldemort once he made his move in the process.

We were in this situation in the first place because Dumbledore was using every trained combat wizard he knew in the Order, leaving him with no one to teach defense. If he'd just held one back, we wouldn't have Umbridge at all. We probably could've learned a lot from a year with the real Moody, for example. Then, something clicked into place. There was a trustworthy wizard not being occupied with the Order who Dumbledore hadn't thought of, and a way to get him here.

"Loki, I'm going to need your help," I told my dog as I worked through the details. Everything I needed was either already in Hogwarts or in the Order's headquarters. Harry had every excuse to go there and visit Sirius over the holiday. I'd need to talk to him before the holiday officially started and get his help with the plan.

I'd planned to talk to him between classes, but the next morning, neither he, nor any of the Weasleys were at breakfast. Neville and Hermione met Sloth, Luna, and I in the hall after breakfast and explained what had happened. Harry'd had a vision about a snake attacking Arthur Weasley. He and the Weasleys had been rushed out of the school shortly after.

With Umbridge now in charge of all punishments, we didn't dare cut class, but come lunchtime, the five of us descended on DUmbledore's office on mass. Dumbledore looked as though he was expecting us. Five high backed chairs were positioned across from his desk.

"To forestall your questions," said Dumbledore, "yes, Arthur was genuinely attacked. Thanks to Harry's prompt action in reporting his vision, Arthur was found in time. He is currently in stable condition at St. Mungo's. I have sent both his children and Harry to the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix at number 12 Grimauld Place, which is both secure and near to St. Mungo's so they can visit him on his ward."

"I thought convincing you to let Neville and Luna in on this would take more persuasion," I admitted.

"It seemed safer to just open the door than to have you all directing your talents toward finding a way to break the fidellius charm," replied Dumbledore. "Besides which, you have all proven yourselves many times over."

"Can we go to see Harry?" asked Hermione.

"I must insist that you stay at Hogwarts until the term is officially over," said Dumbledore. "Once that's done, I shall make arrangements for the Knight Bus to come pick you up."

"There's a fireplace in Grimauld Place," I said.

"True," said Dumbledore, "but the floo network is being monitored. And regardless, I do not want to draw any more attention to Harry's connection to Lord Voldemort than necessary."

"What is that connection?" I asked. "I thought it was Tom projecting emotions deliberately to make Harry unstable and angry to feed into Fudge's smear campaign. He's been blocking it with occlumency since Tom's resurrection. He wouldn't send Harry a warning about Mr. Weasley, though."

"It is my belief that Lord Voldemort has been unaware of the risks of the connection he inadvertently strengthened by using Harry's blood in his resurrection ritual," said Dumbledore. "As a result, Harry has been able to access some of Voldemort's thoughts and emotions when Voldemort is experiencing strong emotions."

"Harry's unconsciously performing legilimency?" asked Sloth.

"It is more fair to say that Voldemort's thoughts are boiling over the surface and spilling into Harry's mind than that Harry is doing anything in particular to draw them out," said Dumbledore.

"He needs legilimency training," I said. "This is something he needs to develop and get control of. If he can dig around in Tom's mind, he can find out where the other Horcruxes are."

"No," said Dumbledore firmly. "Lord Voldemort is a powerful legilimense, and a talented occlumens. No good will come of attempting to probe his thoughts."

"You must not like Mr. Weasley very much," said Luna.

"She's right. Good already has come of it," said Neville. "And this isn't the first time. If he'd known legilimency, he could've gotten more details last year and stopped Tom coming back at all."

"Whle those were both fortunate slips on Lord Voldemort's part, we cannot rely on him remaining so sloppy once he realizes the nature of the connection," said Dumbledore. "I know you are all eager to help, but this is not the way."

"So, we're all going?" asked Hermione briskly.

"I can meet you all at St. Mungo's," said Neville. "My gran was planning a trip anyway."

"I'll tell my parents I need to stay at Hogwarts to study for exams," said Hermione.

"My dad'll be thrilled I'm helping subvert the Ministry of Magic," said Luna.

"Well, that sounds like a plan, then," I said.

* * *

Hermione, Sloth, Luna, and I arrived at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix in the early evening. Riding the Knight Bus was even more terrifying than traveling by Ministry car. In addition to driving like a lunatic and relying on magic to get obstacles like pedestrians, cars, mailboxes, and buildings safely out of the way, the bus had some sort of teleport system that sounded like an explosion whenever the bus shifted from town to town. But most worryingly, none of the chairs were even bolted down, causing us to slide around the bus with every stop, start, and turn. As little as Loki had liked flying strapped under a broomstick, he seemed to like this even less, and I didn't blame him one bit.

Mrs. Weasley answered the door and welcomed us in. Harry and Ron were having a chess match on the floor in the living room, where Sirius was talking to James and Lily about Arthur's condition.

"Hard to believe the boy just closed up Arthur's wounds like it was nothing when the healers couldn't manage after days of work," said Sirius.

"Too bad it didn't do anything about the venom," said James. "Sounds like he'll be in the hospital until they find a cure if he doesn't want to bleed to death from his first paper cut once he's back in the office."

"You closed the wound?" I asked Ron.

"Sure did," he said proudly as his bishop beat one of Harry's knights senseless. "It's a good thing I kept on with my alchemy training this year."

"We really can't thank you enough," declared Mrs. Wealey, sweeping Sloth and I up in a hug.

"Hi, Hermione, Luna," said Harry. "You doing alright?"

After the initial greetings, Harry, Luna, Ron, Ginny, Hermione, Sloth, and I made our way upstairs to talk privately. As an extra precaution, we switched to parseltongue. Not fully satisfied with the precautions, Harry had a muffling charm thrown over an empty painting.

"That's a portrait of one of the former headmasters. He works for Dumbledore and reports in to him," explained Harry.

"Good thinking," I said. "Dumbledore'll be better off if he doesn't find out about this."

"You're going to teach Harry legilimency anyway," said Hermione, not quite managing disapproval in her voice.

"I would if I knew legilimency," I said. "As it is, I figure we'll need to talk to Snape about it once we're back in Hogwarts. No, I wanted to talk about getting rid of Umbridge."

"What are you thinking?" asked Harry cautiously.

"Well," I said, "Dumbledore only had to hire her because everyone else he could have asked is busy with the Order, your folks included. But I realized he overlooked Sirius."

"Sirius is a wanted criminal," declared Hermione. "He can't just walk into Hogwarts."

"He's done it before," noted Ron.

"No, that's the beauty of it," I said. "We can kill two birds with one stone. Remember last year? Barty Crouch Jr.? We pull the same trick. Sneak Sirius into the castle, incapacitate Umbridge, and have Sirius impersonate her with polyjuice."

"And as she's right under Fudge, Sirius can get evidence of everything he's been up to," said Luna.

"You realize we're talking about going up against the Ministry?" said Hermione. "If we get caught, we'll all go to Azkaban."

"If we don't act, Hagrid'll go back to Azkaban," I said.

"What?" asked Harry, alarmed.

"You've seen how she's been digging up dirt on him," I said. "Whether she finds anything or has to trump something up, you know the Ministry won't be happy with just sacking him."

"All her classes are just reading from the book," said Ginny, thoughtfully. "We could coach him on everything he needs to know."

"Fudge's wasted half a year fighting us instead of Tom," said Harry. "Maybe it is time we started hitting back."

"How are we going to sneak Sirius out of here without him being missed if we're planning to keep Dumbledore out of this?" asked Hermione. It was a practical question. Everyone was done objecting once Harry made up his mind.

I stroked Loki's head and said, "Sirius has been sulking over not being useful lately. I'm thinking once Harry leaves again, he'll get so moody he'll start sulking as a dog."

"Switch him for Loki? That's brilliant!" said Ron.

"It won't take much transfiguration to swap their builds and coloration," said Hermione.

"Loki's probably safer here as Sirius' double than he'd be at Hogwarts anyway," I said. "Only a matter of time before Umbridge tried to hurt him to get to me."

"This doesn't mean we have to stop the DA, does it?" asked Luna.

Harry shook his head. "Sirius'll have to pretend to be her in classes still, and that means being a rubbish teacher."

* * *

Grimauld Place was surprisingly cheery over the holidays. Harry's parents and the Weasleys were around the whole holiday. Lots of questions about our school year were asked. We denied ever having formed the DA, and complained freely about Umbridge. Attempts were made to get the Order members to talk about what they were guarding, but no one really expected success at that.

Harry'd approached Sirius in private, and he proved every bit as enthusiastic about he plan as I'd hoped. Sirius recruited James and Lupin to help cover for him while he was out. He explained about Loki serving as his double, and they didn't ask where he was going.

Bill spoke freely about what he'd managed to learn about the security around the Lestrange vault. It was extreme, but not impregnable. No security was absolute. In addition to being past the thief's downfall, a product of goblin magic that washes away all active spell effects, including things like polyjuice and the Imperius curse, there was a dragon chained up outside. The wall would only open at the touch of a Gringotts employed goblin, then you get into the security inside the vault itself. The gold was charmed to heat to flesh searing temperatures and multiply itself when disturbed. The duplication was temporary like leprechaun gold, but it lasted long enough to crush and burn any intruder.

Sloth and I could hop down to the vault today based on what Bill told us. The real problem was that doing so would piss off the goblins. As it was, Voldemort had made a robbery attempt a few years back using Quirrell, and that, more than anything else, made the goblins disinclined to sign on to his side in the coming war. They had plenty of grievances against the Ministry of Magic, chief among them the wand ban for nonhumans, but the last thing we wanted to do was give them a reason to overlook or consider balanced out Voldemort's robbery attempt.

Gaining access to the vault through legitimate means was problematic. As Sirius aptly demonstrated, being a known fugitive on the run from the dementors mattered not in the slightest to the goblins. They were extremely independent from the Ministry, and had no mechanism for forfeiting the contents of a criminal's vault. Once the Lestranges died in Azkaban, the vault's contents would be passed on to their closest relatives and next of kin, the Malfoys, which was hardly better.

This year, I'd gotten everyone remembralls, so we could check regularly if our memories had been modified. It was unlikely with our occlumency training, but seemed better safe than sorry. Plus, they'd serve as useful study aids in our OWL year, even if they weren't allowed during the test itself.

Mrs. Weasley had knitted us all sweaters. Harry had gotten me a knife, which was supposed to be able to open any lock, even those charmed to protect against normal unlocking spells. Sirius had gotten him one last year. Sloth had given me a book filled with drawings of all the major events that had happened since coming to Hogwarts. She'd gotten very good indeed, approaching the photo realism of Alex Loius Armstrong's artwork.

Fred and George apparated into the room while we were going through our gifts. They warned us not to go downstairs just yet, as Mrs. Weasley was crying. Percy had returned his gifts unopened. Apparently, he hadn't even asked after his father's health while he was in the hospital.

After Mrs. Weasley had settled down and we all had lunch, our group headed to St. Mungo's for a visit with Arthur. The wizard hospital was concealed behind a barrier similar to the one at King's Cross Station. We stepped through a display window in front of a closed shop and found ourselves in the lobby. He was pleased to see us, and chatted happily about the continuing search for an antivenom. They apparently had him on a regular blood replenishing potion.

I offered to make him a homunculus, but he brushed the offer off. James and Lily still weren't legally recognized as themselves, and there would be problems if he was found out. Besides, he wanted to help the hospital find the antivenom in case they needed it to treat the victims of another attack by Voldemort's snake.

We met Neville there as planned. He was visiting his parents there, who had been driven permanently insane by prolonged use of the Cruciatus curse by Belatrix Lestrange. It was what got her imprisoned in Azkaban. Neville came down with us, along with his grandmother, to visit Arthur and wish him a speedy recovery.

The healers did eventually find an antivenom, and Arthur returned to Grimauld Place before the end of the holiday. There was a sense of anticipation in the air as the time to return to Hogwarts approached. We made the switch of Sirius for Loki at the last possible minute, during the distracting jumble of last minute packing, hugs goodbye, and well wishes. One trip on the Knight Bus later, and we were back at Hogwarts, ready to implement stage two of the plan.

* * *

Sirius followed me as I attended my classes the first day like Loki usually did. He was far more poorly trained than Loki, which I feared might prove a giveaway. Fortunately, he wouldn't have to keep up the chirade for long. At the end of my first day of classes, I headed down to Umbridge's office.

"Professor Umbridge," I said as I entered. "I have something important to tell you. It's about Professor Trelawney."

"She's one of your favorite teachers, isn't she?" said Umbridge, adopting her falsely sweet voice. "I understand you dropped Arithmancy so you could continue taking lessons with her."

The reminder of my confiscated time turner was deliberate. A measured reminder that she had the power to take things away form me. It was a pity the plan called for her to be captured alive. I took out a notebook and showed it to her.

"I've kept track of all Professor Trelawney's predictions since my first class with her. Whenever one turns out to be true or false, I make a note of it in another column. She's got a really good track record. Look."

"As you are not the Hogwarts High Inquisitor, Mr. Oren, it is not your opinion of... Professor... Trelawney's abilities that matters."

"But don't you remember? She predicted you were in danger! She was right." That last sentence was spoken in a cold, calm voice without a hint of the previous pleading. I raised my wand and a jet of blue light flew from the tip, knocking her unconscious. The DA meetings had significantly improved my ability to emulate a stunning spell.

At my side, Sirius shook off his Loki disguise and resumed human form. He cut off a hair from her unconscious form as I fished a vial of polyjuice out of my bag.

"You know she won't remember any of that once we modify her memory and let her go at the end of the year, right?" said Sirius, dropping the hair into the potion.

"I got to see the look on her face," I replied. "That's all that matters."

Making sure his clothing wouldn't get in the way, Sirius downed the contents of my vial and transformed into a duplicate of Professor Umbridge. He gagged and wrinkled his nose, saying, "Taking that every hour for the rest of the hear is the one downside of this plan."

Snatching up her wand, Sirius bound her with conjured ropes and stuffed her into a trunk. He cast a spell to muffle sounds from the trunk and started going through her papers.

"I'll leave you to your preparations," I said, placing a tray with twenty four crstal vials on Umbridge's desk. See you in class."

Leaving the office, I went to find Harry and the others. I found them working on the day's homework in teh library. Everyone looked very distracted.

"It's done," I hissed in parseltongue. "Now it's time to go see Snape."

"I still don't like this part of the plan," hissed Harry as he packed his books. "This'll mean pretending to take remedial potions again. My mom'll kill me if I can't pass my potions OWL with all these extra lessons I'm not actually having."

"You know you're not really bad at it," hissed Ron. "Snape just grades you unfairly to suck up the Slytherins."

"That does make it harder to assess where he actually is in the class, though," noted Hermione.

"Oh well," said Harry. "I might get lucky and Dumbledore'll have forbidden Snape from teaching me legilimency."

* * *

"The headmaster has expressly forbidden me from teaching you legilimency, Potter," said Snape. "He is under the impression that if you are trained in legilimency, you will do something foolish like try to look into the Dark Lord's mind throuh the connection you share. I, on the other hand, know differently."

"You do?" asked Harry, looking between Snape and us.

A smug smile crept over Snape's features. "I do, Potter. The truth is, you will recklessly attempt to access the Dark Lord's mind in any case, under the misguided idea that doing so would qualify as helping in the effort to defeat him. The only difference is that without proper legilimency training, your efforts to do so will be clumsy, obvious, and will likely open your mind up to the Dark Lord's influence long before you acquired any useful information."

"So you'll teach me?" asked Harry.

"Certain conditions must apply to my answer," said Snape with a frown. "First, the headmaster must never hear about this. Take nay information you acquire to me, and I will bring it to the Order's attention in such a way as to not reveal you as the source. Secondly, you must swear to attempt no legilimency against the Dark Lord until I say. As a skillful occlumens, he will detect your initial, clumsy intrusions, and be put on his guard."

"Why do you get the credit for anything Harry learns?" demanded Ron.

"Intelligence work is not about credit, Mr. Weasley," said Snape, not quite rolling his eyes. "It is about giving your side accurate information. Any information retrieved from the Dark Lord's mind must be considered suspect until it is independently verified. My position within the Dark Lord's inner circle affords me more chances to verify, and a plausible place for me to have learned things without informing the headmaster of your determination to ignore his instructions."

"When can we start?" asked Hermione.

"We," Snape emphasized, "will not be starting at all. I have agreed to teach Potter, not your entire little clique. With the Dark Lord risen, I do have other strains on my time these days. Besides which, absolutely no one would believe you need to take remedial potions, Miss Granger."

"But I do," said Neville, screwing up his courage to face the man who was his boggart. "You don't have to teach me, but I'm not leaving Harry alone with you."

"Do you no longer consider your basilisk a sufficient threat, Longbottom?" asked Snape disdainfully.

"She might not recognize what you might do as an attack," said Neville.

"No one'll believe it really is just remedial potions if Neville isn't there," said Luna. "He's the worst student in the class."

"Way to show your support," said Ron with mock enthusiasm.

"So, we're agreed?" I said.

"Very well," said Snape.

* * *

With two new conspiracies set in motion, I settled down to bed in the Ravenclaw dorms feeling accomplished and invigorated. We were finally making progress against our revealed enemies. The next morning brought news of a setback. In the Daily Prophet, news of ten of Voldemort's Death Eaters escaping Azkaban was front page news.

Fudge was blaming Sirius rather than admit he was wrong about Voldemort being back. The Lestrangers were among those out of Azkaban. I wasn't sure, but it felt like that should provide an opening to get access to their vault and the horcrux within. Unfortunately, nothing was coming immediately to mind.

In my first defense class with Sirius, it was clear he was planning to take full advantage of the news. Life sized wanted posters of each of the escaped Death Eaters were up on the board. Beneath each was a list of their crimes.

"Good afternoon, class," said Sirius just as we'd coached him over the holiday.

"Good afternoon, Professor Umbridge," chimed the class dully.

"Wands away," said Sirius unnecessarily. "As we finished chapter sixteen last lesson, I would like you all to put your copies of Defensive Magical Theory away and retrieve your quills."

People stopped turning pages in their books after taking a moment to process that the lesson would not be silent reading.

"As many of you have no doubt heard, a number of former members of the Death Eaters have escaped from Azkaban. The crimes for which they were imprisoned and the means the Aurors used to apprehend them should serve as a good set of real workd examples of what you've been studying."

He was still eschewing practical training and sticking with theory, but Sirius walked us through detailed case studies of the criminal careers of the ten escaped Death Eaters. He discussed their dueling styles and favorite spells. He detailed the investigative process used in the last war and after to track down Voldemort's supporters. It was as informative and interesting as a pure theory class could be. I was feeling really good about my decision to have the woman replaced.

"Do you suppose Sirius overdid it?" asked Ron that evening when we met for his alchemy lesson. "I mean, someone's bound to notice he's teaching useful stuff."

"I guess he's counting on everyone assuming the Death Eater breakouts got the Ministry to soften its policy," I said, finishing my check of the security. "Okay, so we finished amplifiers last term, so today, we're going to start in on how you use the Gate to travel between worlds."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Our heroes are taking the war seriously, reaching for every advantage they can get their hands on.


	37. Chapter 50: Rescuing Percy

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 50) Rescuing Percy  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The seven of us took turns letting Harry practice legilimency on us. Our occlumency training left us all aware enough of his intrusions to offer useful criticisms. We were initially just projecting a single clear thought so Harry could learn to correctly interpret what he saw in our minds, but eventually, he'd move on to learning to probe past our defenses in preparation for Voldemort.

Harry was carrying a recording device like the one we'd used to record Lupin's animagus instructions. That way, once Snape finished the lessons, the others would be able to learn too. I felt a little left out, but consoled myself with the knowledge that I'd at least get a good understanding of the theory and the learning process.

Sirius' defense lessons continued in the same vein as his first class, going over Death Eater tacics and countermeasures by the Aurors from the last wizarding war. Since they didn't know about the replacement, Hagrid and Trelawney both remained nervous about their poor performance reviews by Umbridge. Both were trying to make it up by giving us the best preparation they could for the OWLs.

The Death Eater breakouts galvanized the DA members, who worked harder than ever to master the skills Harry was teaching them. No one was working harder than Neville. Though he didn't say it, it was obvious that with the ones who tortured his parents walking free, he was intent on avenging them. He even took back up his animagus training that he'd quit on last year, reasoning that if Petigrew could do it in his fifth year, there was nothing stopping him.

At the beginning of February, Harry got the eight of us together. Whatever this was about, Ron looked upset and Hermione looked conflicted. We found an empty classroom and used parseltongue for security as usual.

"We have a big problem," hissed Harry urgently. "Sirius nicked some veritasyrum from Snape's stores to interrogate Umbridge with. It turns out, she sent the dementors after me this summer."

"Fudge didn't order it?" I asked, surprised.

"She did it on her own," Harry confirmed. "The problem is, getting me to perform underage magic and using that as a pretext to destroy my wand wasn't her idea. Percy'd been floating that idea around Fudge's inner circle since his promotion. Umbridge was just the first one to act on it."

"Percy?" I asked. "I knew he was supporting Fudge's version of events, but we were pretty sure destroying your wand was a Death Eater goal after what happened in the graveyard."

"So Percy is a Death Eater?" asked Luna conversationally.

"No!" snapped Ron. "Percy's a complete prat, but he's not evil. He'd never join the Death Eaters."

"We think someone got to him and put him under the Imperius curse," said Ginny. "That's why he's been so thorough about cutting off ties with the family. Why he never even checked on dad when he was in the hospital. We're his family. We know him better than anyone else. We'd realize he was acting strange."

"It makes sense," said Hermione. "The Order's been checking and rechecking Fudge for signs of the Imperius curse. Percy's in a junior position and wouldn't be checked as thoroughly by the Order or the Aurors, but he's still with Fudge all the time, where he can make suggestions and feed his paranoia about Dumbledore."

"We have to rescue him," said Sloth at once.

"Of course we're rescuing him," said Harry. "That's why we're talking about it. The question is how? We know Dumbledore and the Order are short staffed to the point they need Mundungus Fletcher to pull guard duty shifts. On top of that, if we bring them in on this, we'll have to explain about Sirius and how we found out."

"Is this something we can do ourselves?" asked Neville.

"He lives alone in a London flat," said Ginny. "Breaking in and capturing him'd be easy."

"Obviously, the hard part is breaking him free of the Imperius curse," I said. "We don't know who put it on him, so killing the caster or forcing them to lift the curse is out."

"What about the thieve's downfall?" asked Harry. "Bill said it washed away active spell effects, and he mentioned someone trying to steal something by Imperiusing the vault's owner and getting foiled by it."

"That's goblin magic," said Hermione, "and they guard their secrets jealously."

"We don't need to learn how to make one," said Harry. "We just need to get Percy into the one under Gringotts."

"Sloth and I have a vault protected by it," I said. "Unlimited money so we paid extra for their best security."

"I don't think knocking him over the head and hauling him into Gringotts would work very well," mused Ron. "If we had some of Fudge's hair we could use polyjuice. Percy wouldn't question anywhere Fudge wanted to take him."

"One of us could do it," said Sloth. "It wouldn't have to hold up very long. Just one trip from Percy's flat to Diagon Alley."

"You're a better actor than I am," I admitted.

"Should I pop into the Lestrange vault while I'm down there?" asked Sloth.

"No," said Harry. "We don't want to provoke the goblins. Especially not until we're sure that's the last horcrux."

"Ideally, you should go on a Hogsmeade weekend," I suggested. "No one'll miss you that way and you can take the floo network from one of the places in town."

"The next one coming is valentine's day," pouted Sloth. "You had better have chocolates and flowers waiting when I get back."

"Percy'll want to catch up with his family anyway," I said. "Flowers and chocolate'll be just the start."

"I really don't need to hear about this," said Ginny.

"Are you sure you can manage this on your own?" asked Harry.

"No problem," said Sloth. "I'll make an early morning of it so you'll have all day to catch up and compare notes with him.

"Speaking of Valentine's day, Harry," said Hermione, "I've been talking to Luna and do you think you could meet us at the Three Broomsticks around midday?" Ginny raised an eyebrow, and Hermione quickly said, "Nothing like that!"

"I'm just saying," said Ginny. "I'm stuck with an all day Quidditch practice and Lust here decides to lure away my boyfriend with help from another girl." It was good natured teasing and everyone knew it, but that didn't stop Hermione from being flustered.

"Oh, for goodness sake," she huffed. "It's about arranging an interview. I'm still blackmailing Rita Skeeter, so I'm going to have her write an article with Harry's account of Tom's resurrection."

"My dad's happy to punish Harry's interview," said Luna.

"Well, it's nice to know none of you'll be bored while Ginny and I are stuck in Quidditch practice," said Ron dryly.

"I'm still not allowed on Hogsmeade trips," said Neville. "Maybe I'll get some more work in on my animagus transformation."

* * *

With two weeks until those plans were set into motion, I dedicated a bit of my free time to solving a mystery. Hagrid was showing up to Care of Magical Creatures classes covered in fresh bruises, scrapes, and strains. He adamantly refused to discuss where he was getting them, and given Hagrid's track record on keeping secrets, saying absolutely nothing and successfully avoiding our questions was out of character.

To solve the mystery, I dispatched one of my metal bugs to follow Hagrid and report back to me. I made sure to double check my privacy before letting it replay what it had seen. Apparently, Hagrid's mission hadn't been quite as unsuccessful as he claimed. There was a giant int he forbidden forest.

Based on the surveillance footage, Hagrid was trying to teach manners and English to the giant, who's name was Grawp. Grawp was reasonably friendly and good natured, but seemed to not know his own strength. Hagrid's injuries were a result of Grawp lashing out when confused or frustrated. The centaurs weren't shy about telling Hagrid they weren't happy with Grawp's presence, but Hagrid stood his ground, insisting Grawp had just as much right to live in the forest as they did.

Deciing I'd nosed around enough in Hagrid's affairs, I left the matter there. Hagrid didn't seem to be in any real danger from the giant, and if his efforts succeeded, we'd have a new ally. Not spreading it around was a no brainer. I could tell the others that Hagrid was safe if their concern threatened to cause them to do something foolish, but otherwise, this was Hagrid's secret to keep or tell.

Classes were going well. I remained nervous about whether the examiners would give me credit on the practical portion of my OWLs when I emulated the effects of spell using alchemy if I was using the right wand movements and pronunciation. I wasn't even sure they believed me when I said I was a muggle. Most of my classmates still didn't.

It was a sort of quiet bigotry. Most wizards found it impossible to believe muggles could ever accomplish feats comparable to wizards. It might well work in my favor. But I didn't know who was conducting the tests, and they might not yet know themselves how they were going to treat me. All I could do was study the theory, drill on wand movements and incantations, and remind myself that even if I failed every practical that involved using magic, I still had a shot at nine OWLs.

Hermione's practice OWLs combined with my grades in class had me feeling pretty confident I wouldn't be kicked out of Hogwarts on the grounds of not being qualified to move on to NEWTs in any subject, but I wanted to keep studying everything. Almost as important to me, I wanted to prove you didn't need to be born special to grow up to be a certified wizard.

* * *

Fred and George planned to watch the all day Gryffindor Quidditch practice on Valentine's day, but I convinced them to come along to Hogsmeade with Sloth and I. Once we were in Hogsmeade, I brought them to the Shrieking Shack while Sloth headed off on her mission. In the privacy of the Shrieking Shack, I explained to the Weasley twins what we believed had happened to Percy, and our plan to rescue him.

"Let me get this straight," said Fred. "Percy's been acting like more of a prat than usual because someone on You-Know-Who's side has him under the Imperius curse?"

I nodded.

"And he staged the row with dad and leaving the family so we wouldn't figure it out?" asked George.

I nodded again.

"And the Death Eaters've been using him to make Fudge paranoid about Dumbledore, try to get Harry's wand destroyed, and saddle us with a useless defense teacher?" Fred confirmed.

I nodded a third time.

"Well, now it all makes sense," said George. "You've been hanging around with Looney Lovegood too long. She's rubbed off on you."

"You know Tom's back," I said. "Do you really think he'd do nothing for a full year?"

"What's Tom care about Percy?" asked Fred.

"He cares about hurting Harry," I said. "And you're all the closest thing he's had to family until his parents came back. And let's face facts, he still barely knows them."

"Breaking up our family to hurt Harry?" asked George. "You'd think a so-called Dark Lord would be too busy conquering the world to bother with something so petty."

"He made up a scary sounding name so he wouldn't be called Tom anymore. He put a taboo on his new name so everyone would be too afraid to say it. And, oh yes, he tried to kill a baby because his parents defied him. He is exactly that petty."

"He's got a point," said Fred.

"Okay, we give Percy a chance to explain himself, then we jinx him within an inch of his life," said George cheerfully.

"If he really was breaking mum's heart under the Imperius curse, he'll feel bad enough to want a bit of punishment," said Fred.

"And if he was doing it on his own, he'll deserve it," agreed George.

"Do you mind doing the jinxing someplace else?" I asked. "I've got a date here a little later today."

Sloth walked in through a wall holding Percy's hand about an hour later. She came over to me and nodded with a smile while Percy approached his brothers.

"Lucius Malfoy," said Percy, "put me under the Imperius curse. He's going to Azkaban for this."

"Is it true?" asked Fred. "You said all those things to dad because he made you?"

"Yes," said Percy. "I feel awful about it, but I'm going to make it up to you."

"Mum's been crying about you," said George. "You'd best tell her what happened right away."

"First thing I'll do once I talk to Fudge," said Percy earnestly.

"No," said Fred. "First thing you'll do period."

The twins proceeded to make good on their plan to jinx Percy in ways I hadn't previously known were possible. I made a mental note to include a bit on what happens when certain jinxes interact with one another on the same target in the written portion of my defense OWL. Meanwhile, the twins trussed Percy up and carried him off to see Mrs. Weasley.

* * *

Author's comments:  
I decided to have Percy acting under the Imperius curse for a few reasons. First, the falling out with his family seemed forced. Him getting promoted right after being made a scapegoat for the Barty Crouch Sr. incident was an obvious ploy, and Percy isn't too stupid to notice that it's suspicious timing. Additionally, the whole point of the Imperius curse narratively is to make it clear even people who are genuinely trustworthy aren't above suspicion of acting on Voldemort's agenda. Turning families against one another is exactly the sort of thing it ought to be doing narratively. Given how little Percy says after arriving for the Battle of Hogwarts, I don't consider this to be contradicting canon, even if this is stretching things just a little.


	38. Chapter 52: The War Begins

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 52) The War Begins  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Harry's interview for the Quibbler was printed the same day as news of Lucius Malfoy's arrest for using the unforgivable Imperius curse on a Ministry official came in. It was a solid one two punch for those who doubted Harry's version of events. The Daily Prophet asserted that Malfoy was acting alone, but the revelation that an ex Death Eater had been able to get to someone as close to Fudge as Percy shook people's faith in the Ministry's story, as evidenced by the avalanche of letter Harry was sent the same day the story came out.

The next morning, Harry wasn't at breakfast. Checking in with Ron, I verified nothing had happened to him. He'd gone to see Snape about having another vision from Voldemort. Apparently, Voldemort had been given some bad information about how to get the weapon the Order of the Phoenix was guarding. Now, he was back on track. All this information added up to whatever Voldemort was after being in the Department of Mysteries in the lower level of the Ministry of Magic, near the archway Sloth and I had used to enter this world.

According to Snape, the Order already had all the relevant information Harry's vision had contained. Snape further emphasized that Harry needed to refrain from attempting to penetrate Voldemort's mind until he was much farther along in his legilimency. He obviously thought Harry had sought the vision out rather than it coming unbidden.

Based on information Sirius and Percy were reporting, Fudge was feeling backed into a corner. Evidence and popular opinion were tipping more and more in favor of Harry, but with a months long smear campaign, Fudge was too committed to his original story. I just hoped he was quietly preparing for war.

Sirius used Lucius Malfoy's arrest as an excuse to discuss the Death Eater trials after the last war, and how Lucius Malfoy had gotten off by claiming to have been put under the Imperius curse himself. This proceeded to what Lucius Malfoy had actually done during the last war.

As April came around, the DA was now working on the patronus charm. Lupin had said this was advanced magic of a sort that most qualified wizards couldn't perform. Harry was busy proving that you could teach it to an informal motley of dedicated misfits if you had the right knack for teaching. A number of full body patronuses were floating around the room by the end of the first lesson. After using the Marauder's Map to guide everyone else safely back to their dorms, Harry turned and talked to me and Sloth.

"Why weren't either of you practicing with the others today?" he asked.

Sloth and I looked at each other confused. Then I said, "We're not wizards, Harry. You know that."

"That didn't stop you from practicing the disarming charm, the shield charm, the stunning spell, the reductor curse, the impediment jinx..."

"All those are spells we can emulate with alchemy," I said.

"Find a way to emulate this one with alchemy, then," insisted Harry. "Everyone else was at least getting a silver vapor. It'll hurt their confidence if anyone outright fails."

"It's not about confidence," I said. "Our powers plain don't work the same way yours do."

"We've been really lucky so far," said Sloth. "A lot of spells can be duplicated if we're really clever, but all we can do with a patronus charm is make those pins based on the theory behind the spell."

"If you can make the pins," said Harry, "and you can project glowing images iwth those spy bugs, and you can make solid planes of force with your shield charm, what's stopping you from putting all those pieces together?"

I opened my mouth, then closed it. It would take a lot of work, and a lot of trial and error would be involved, but what Harry was saying wasn't as unreasonable as I first thought.

"Greed?" asked Sloth.

"I'll try to have something by our next meeting," I promised.

* * *

My first attempt yielded a glowing blue image of Loki, composed of alchemically suspended air that I could manipulate like a puppet. It would probably trick my fellow DA members, but it would be no real protection against a dementor. For that, it would need a consciousness, a spirit, akin to what I put in my patronus pin, but capable of controlling a body of light as though it were just one of my chessmen.

After a solid week of all nighters, and a notebook filled with my observations, theories, partial successes, and failures, I finally succeeded in producing a short lived, conscious, mobile projection. My result expended red stone energy imbuing the construct with consciousness with the knowledge of how to fight, the will to protected, and utterly incapable of despair.

I was eager to show off my new technique, so when Harry approached me, I didn't notice at first how worried and ill he looked. Instead, I just happily hissed to him that I'd done it, and I hoped we were having another DA meeting soon.

"That's great, Greed, really," said Harry, distractedly. "I've got a question about that recorder I've been carrying around to my legilimency lessons. Is there a way to erase a lesson from it?"

"Yeah," I said. "You just tell it to. Why? What happened?"

"I... I saw something personal of Snape's, and I don't want it spread around."

"It doesn't record what goes on in your heads," I said. "It only records what it can see and hear."

"It wasn't in Snape's head when I saw it," said Harry. "It was in a pensive."

I didn't press Harry for details on what he had seen. I just demonstrated hwo to erase the information. I did ask for details about the pensive itself. Apparently, it was a bowl that wizards could put their memories in to look them over. You use your wand to pluck the memories out of your head and you drop it in the bowl. You can apparently fall into the bowl and experience the memory like you were there, but as a ghostly presence unable to interact with anything or anyone.

Harry left, on his way to the defense professor's office. He wanted to talk to Sirius about what he'd seen. The next time I saw Harry, he looked a lot better.

"I've had a talk with my dad," he said when I commented on it. "I convinced him to talk to Snape about some stuff that happened when they were in school. He didn't get a chance to apologize to him before he died."

"Your dad was here?" I asked, surprised.

"No. Sirius let me borrow his two way communication mirror."

"His what?" I asked.

Harry took out a small, handheld mirror and showed it to me. "It's one of a linked pair. I just say my dad's name, and I appear in his mirror and he appears in this one, and we can talk."

My eyes went wide. "Harry, that's amazing. I didn't even know things like that existed."

"I think they're like the Marauder's Map. Something my dad and his friends invented on their own."

"I see..." I said. "So, with all the warnings about the owls and fireplaces not being secure, James and Sirius have been sitting on the magical equivalent of a cell phone this entire time! The Dark Lord nearly won the last war because his side had pagers when the rest of the world was suck with messenger birds, and something like this has been an option!"

"We should get Sirius to make more," said Harry, picking up my conversation thread. "Load the DA up with them. The Order too now that I think of it."

It turned out the two way mirrors were literally two way. Each mirror was part of a linked pair and could only ever contact the other mirror in the set. Hermione drew up a phone chain so we could distribute information to all the DA members with each of us having to carry only three mirrors each. Far more conspicuous than the coins, we had to be careful not to let Filch catch us with one.

My first use of mine was to call Sloth and give her the details of my psudo-patronus when we were both in our separate common rooms.

* * *

Following the Easter holidays, I had a meeting with Professor Flitwick to talk about my options for a career after Hogwarts. I had so much I'd have to do when I got back to Amestris, it was hard to decide where to start, or what to set as my priorities. Being immortal meant I'd get it all done eventually, but figuring out the most efficient way to do it would benefit from advice.

"Marcus, have a seat," indicated Professor Flitwick. Pamphlets were scattered all over his desk, each containing details about a different wizarding career. There were so many of them, none of which anyone in Amestris was currently qualified to do.

"Hello, Professor. We have a lot to talk about."

"I see you've been giving this career advice meeting some thought. That's good. So, what ideas did you want to go over?"

"You remember that I came from a country called Amestris where there aren't any magic schools?" He nodded and I continued. "The truth is, we don't have any magical infrastructure at all. No herbologists tending magical plants, no wand makers, no broomstick makers, nothing. I want to change all that, and it seems to me my best place to start is with a school."

"You want to start your own magic school?" asked Professor Flitwick.

I nodded. "Even alchemy isn't studied in a formal, public institution like Hogwarts back home. It's horded in secretive master, apprentice relationships and studied on one's own from textbooks. A school like Hogwarts could change everything."

"Well, that's a new one," said Professor Flitwick. "Plenty of students have told me they want to teach, but founding a school is a little different. From what you say, your school will be limited to what you learn at Hogwarts, at least until magical theorists can be trained up locally, so you're going to want to focus heavily on your core classes of Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Do you know if your world has the same stars?"

"No," I admitted.

"Then you probably won't need to move on to NEWT level Astronomy, since there's a reasonable chance what you study won't be particularly relevant. The same is true for your History of Magic.

"Herbology is a must, especially since it sounds like you'll be needing to import all your seeds and grow them to a reasonable supply before you can really get started with your potions work.

"Runes and Arithmancy are good for theoretical work, and a solid grounding there might help you fill in gaps in your other subjects once you've got your first few classes out the door.

"Care of Magical Creatures will be more important than you might think. With no established wand makers, and no real idea which kinds of creatures are unknown but present in your world, you'll want as broad a grounding as you can get. Otherwise, you'll find yourself without access to materials for wand cores, which will make teaching everything else so much harder.

"You'll have to decide for yourself how much Muggle Studies will help, given you'll be teaching nothing but muggleborn students. I suppose that will depend on if there are any useful muggle ideas where that you want to bring back.

"Now, as far as Divination, true Seers are rare, and their abilities usually manifest in a useful form without much prompting. Headmaster Dumbledore's frequently considered dropping the subject from the Hogwarts curriculum. I know you're fond of the subject, but it might be wise to focus your efforts elsewhere in your NEWT years."

"That gives me a lot to think about. I suppose I'll need to buy up a lot of wands to hold me over until I can find a good local source for magical creatures. I knew I was going to need to bring a lot of seeds. I guess a lot of what I'll be able to teach depends on my OWLs, since I know I need certain scores to get into NEWT classes."

"Your grades have been consistently excellent. Study hard and keep up with your homework, and I expect you'll have your choice of NEWT classes."

* * *

The time for homework was over. Now that the OWLs were nearly upon us, all the fifth years were focused on studying and review. I spent almost half my study hours under the influence of a wit sharpening potion, though in the real exam I'd have to rely on my own skill and memory. All my attempts to divine what sort of questions I'd be dealing with kept giving me warnings about severe violence and impending death.

I did my studying with Sloth, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville. Between us, we had stacks of notes enough to cover one of the large tables in the library. The alchemists among us used red stones to absorb one another's notes in the hopes that something we missed in our own notes would be covered in the other person's.

Finally, the examiners arrived. They were an independent academic group largely above and unconcerned with Ministry politics. Neville'd met some of them before through his grandmother. The only real read on them I could get was that they were old. Old enough to have been doing this same job back when Dumbledore was taking his NEWTs. He was extremely deferential and polite welcoming them in.

The exams themselves were a grueling two week marathon of written and practical tests covering the full dozen subjects taught at Hogwarts. I didn't sleep at all except the night before the Divination test, in case dream interpretation came up. The extra time all went to study and review.

I felt completely confident on the written portions of my exams, but the practicals loomed large each time. I mimicked the effects requested flawlessly, and I felt confident I'd gotten the incantation pronunciation and wand movements right after relentless drilling on them, but in the back of my head, there was the worry that the examiners would take issue with my using alchemy rather than magic.

Charms, Transfiguration, and Defense were all the first week, so I could breathe a sigh of relief they were over. Now, nothing more that required a wand would be coming, and no one had openly called me a fraud. I wouldn't know how they actually felt until the exam results came in. Still, I was determined to get as many OWLs as I could, so after treating myself with some chocolate, I got back to studying.

In the Divination practical, I saw a worrying vision of the head table, empty except for Umbridge in my crystal ball. The tea leaves were less clear, still suggesting a coming disaster. Palm reading one of the ancient proctors indicated that she would yet live to see the old order toppled and a new one put in its place.

Finally, it was our last exam, History of Magic. It was practically an independent study anyway, with Binns' teaching style, but I'd made good use of my time in his classroom over the years, and I knew the material, even if it didn't particularly interest me. I was reading over my completed answers when a few desks over, Harry screamed and fell off his desk. I was on my feet in an instant, but the exam proctor ordered me back to my seat and assured me he'd make sure Harry was alright.

I wrapped my hands around my DA coin while I tried to get back to reading my exam answers. If Harry needed us, he'd use his coin to send us a signal. Finally, it was quills down, and the OWLs were over.

* * *

"Harry's in trouble," said a fourth year, Slytherin DA member urgently when I got out of the examination. "Umbridge has him. The real Umbridge."

"Explain later, rescue now," I said once I'd processed that. "Grab whoever else you can find."

A small group of DA members converged on Umbridge's office, called in by word of mouth and by use of the communication mirrors. There we found Umbridge standing over Harry menacingly while he was tied to a chair. Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle were covering Harry with wands, all looking very smug.

Disarming and stunning spells filled the room as our small army burst in. Harry was the only one in the room awake when we closed the door a few seconds later. Neville used his alchemic sword to cut Harry loose from the ropes.

"What happened?" asked Ron.

"Sirius is in trouble," gasped Harry urgently.

"Sirius Black?" asked one of the Hufflepuffs, alarmed.

"Long story. He's on our side," said Sloth.

"Well, Draco figured out he'd been impersonating Umbridge since Christmas," said the Slytherin who'd alerted us. "He let her loose just before the History of Magic exam. She called for backup and the Aurors came to arrest him. They've also taken the rest of the staff in for questioning."

"The Ministry doesn't have Sirius anymore!" exclaimed Harry with a panicked edge. "Tom does. He's torturing him in the Department of Mysteries to make him get the weapon for him!"

"How did he get him away from the Aurors?" asked Hermione.

"I don't know," said Harry. "All I know is what I saw."

"How are we going to get there?" asked Luna.

"There's a fireplace right there," I said, pointing. "I know the Ministry's connected to the Floo Network."

"We'll be a long time getting us all through that," said one of the Ravenclaw DA members.

"We aren't all going," said Harry. "This is Tom we're talking about."

"You're not going without backup," I insisted.

"We've fought him before," said Neville, steeling up his nerve.

"Someone has to stay and guard them," said one of the Slytherins, pointing at "Umbridge, Draco, Crabbe, and Goyle on the ground.

"Okay," said Harry, thinking quickly through his rising panic. "Everyone who's fought him before, with me. Everyone else, guard Umbridge and watch your communication mirrors. If we need you, be ready to come after us."

Floo powder flared, and soon, the eight of us arrived in the Ministry of Magic. (Ginny had counted her efforts to flush Riddle's diary down the toilet as having fought him and we were in too big a hurry to argue. Especially with her jinxing skills likely to come in handy.) The Statue of Magical Brotherhood, a fountain made of gold, depicting life sized figures of a witch, wizard, goblin, house elf, and centaur stood in the center of the entry hall. Security was absent.

No time to worry about how Voldemort had cleared away the security for his trip, we followed Harry to the lift and headed down. The door opened into a black corridor I hadn't seen for years. Harry led the way, having seen the route Voldemort took in previous visions. The eight of us passed through the door at the end of the hall and entered a round room lit by blue flamed candles with identical handleless doors in every direction.

When the door we came in closed, the walls of the room spun about at high speed. When they stopped, there was no obvious way to know which door we'd come in. It was the same spell that I'd run into in the Triwizard Tournament maze last year, but this time, I had no stars to use to orient myself.

With no better options, we'd have to open doors randomly to see what was inside, and if it was the place from Harry's vision. Hermione marked thee doors as we tried them, so we'd know which doors we'd already checked after the room spun again. I identified the viel Sloth and I had used when we entered this world when one of hte doors opened to that room. Ron held up his silver left fist to emphasize the dangers of approaching it.

Finally, we found the room from Harry's vision. As he led us toward a door on the far size of the room, I noticed a cabinet filled with hourglasses amid the numerous clocks and unidentifiable lab equipment. Those hourglasses, I recognized. This was where the Ministry of Magic stored their time turners.

"Acio," I muttered, flicking my wand toward the glass cabinet. The front door swung open and one of the time turners flew across the room into my hand.

"What are you doing?" demanded Hermione.

"Stealing a time turner," I said without breaking stride. "We declared war on the Ministry when we attacked Umbridge. I'm through worrying about Fudge or his laws and decrees."

"Acio," said Sloth, snatching a second time turner. "These made rescuing Sirius possible last time."

"They've got a point, Hermione," said Ron.

After a moment's hesitation, "Acio," was called out once more and six time turners flew into six waiting hands. They were quickly pocketed and the door Harry led us to was opened.

The next room was where Harry had seen Sirius being tortured by Voldemort. Wands out, our party crept silently along one side of the enormous room. It had high, vaulted ceilings and was lit by more candles with cold burning bluebell flames. Shelves reached nearly to the high ceiling, and on each shelf was a small glass orb. Some orbs shone with a silvery light from a mist swirling within, others were dark, grey, and still.

When we reached the right row, Sirius was nowhere to be found. We searched up and down the row and its immediate neighbors. They couldn't have gone far. We'd gotten here very quickly after Harry's vision. Ron called us back to the spot Harry had directed us to and pointed at one of the glowing orbs.

"It's got your name on it, Harry," said Ron.

"My name?" asked Harry.

Indeed, the label on the orb Ron indicated read, "S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D Dark Lord and (?) Harry Potter."

Ron quickly confirmed none of the rest of our names were nearby. After a long moment's hesitation, Harry took down the orb and stared into it. Suddenly, a dozen masked Death Eaters emerged from behind invisibility spells. They must've been waiting there the whole time. It was a trap. A woman's voice spoke.

"Hand over the prophecy."

"Where's Sirius?" demanded Harry.

The Death Eater threw back her head and laughed. The others chortled along with her while they continued to cover us with their wands. "The Dark Lord always knows!" she thrilled.

"Pick your targets," I hissed in a low parseltongue whisper.

"Wait for my signal," added Harry in an equally low hiss.

"The one doing the talking," called Neville. Even in the low volume snake speech, I detected a hard edge I'd never heard from him before.

The rest of us mapped out our targets in low parseltongue whispers while Harry kept them talking. If they did have Sirius, it would be good to know where he was now rather than needing ot keep one of them alive for Harry to attempt legilimency on. Thankfully, our adventures in second year had taught us that parseltongue was hard to pick out from background noise if you didn't know the language, which let us prepare for Harry's signal.

"I want to know where Sirius is!" demanded Harry.

"I want to know where Sirius is!" mocked the woman, to another brief chorus of chuckles.

"You've got him. He's here. I know he is," said Harry, controlling his voice.

"The little baby woke up fwightened and fort what it dweamed was twoo," mocked the woman using faux baby talk.

"Don't forget to leave their wands intact," hissed Hermione.

"He isn't here," said Harry, dispirited. "He sent me that vision on purpose, didn't he?"

"That's right," said the woman, and I could hear the smirk despite her feature obscuring mask. "Now, hand over the prophecy, or should I start torturing your little friends one by-"

"NOW!" yelled Harry, and everyone sprang into action at once.

Neville showed off his newly acquired animagus transformation for the first time. Leaping at the woman, he turned into a lion in midair. His weight coming down on her, forcing her to the ground, Neville closed his jaws around the back of her neck with a sickening crunch of splintering bone.

In the same instant, Sloth and I raised shields with the bracelets on our left wrists to block attacks from most of the Death Eaters against our group. With her right hand, Sloth fired a bolt of blue light from her wand emulating a stunning spell, which knocked the Death Eater unconscious.

I ignored my wand, which the Death Eaters were used to focusing on in a duel. Instead, I stomped my foot and snapped the fingers on my left hand. A stone spike fatally impaled one of the Death Eaters, and a second's chest exploded messily as explosive gas ignited in his lungs.

Hermione fired a stunning spell that took down her opponent, while Luna fired off a disarming spell so strong her target was hurled into a shelf behind him. His head hit the sturdy wood shelf and he was out cold.

Ron dropped to his knees, clapping and putting up a shield spell with hiss wand to protect from another group of Death Eaters. Slapping his free palm on the ground, he transmuted a chunk of the floor like I had. Instead of spikes, he caused stone hands to reach up and pin down his target.

Black bat wings erupted from the nostrils of the Death Eater Ginny had hexed, flapping in his face and causing him to drop his wand as he grabbed at his face screaming.

Four spells hit the shields we had conjured as the remaining Death Eaters reacted to the fact that they were under attack. With two thirds of their number out of the fighting, and a bloody faced lion turning its gaze on them, the Death Eaters fled. We gave chase, with Harry lagging behind at the rear after pausing to stun the Death Eaters who were out of the fighting but still conscious.

Neville, Sloth, and I were faster than the others and were able to outpace the Death Eaters, catching up to them as they arrived in the room containing the unknown lab equipment and the time turners.

"Adava-" began one of the Death Eaters, but he was silenced by a lion crushing his throat before he could finish the curse. Another managed to get off a stunning hex that finally put Neville down.

Sloth dropped through the floor, out of sight, pupping up within arm's reach of the Death Eater who'd stunned Neville. She reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. He was dead by the time he hit the ground.

I launched a bolt of blue light from my wand and hit a fleeing Death Eater in the back. Motes of blue alchemic light floated from his collapsing body back to my wand and gathered around the red stone at the tip. Absorbing the motes of light, the crystal's rough hewn edges turned smooth and glassy. His life force reinforced and strengthened the power of my red stone.

The others arrived at that point, and five red stunning hexes hit the sole remaining Death Eater. His unconscious form was hurled backward by the force of the spells, smashing into the glass cabinet of time turners. Suddenly, his momentum reversed, and he flew away from the cabinet, which unsmashed itself. He stopped in midair for a split second, then hurled into the cabinet again. He was stuck in a constantly repeating loop.

"Okay, smashing time turners is bad," I commented.

"Is Neville okay?" asked Harry.

"Just stunned," said Sloth.

"I've got the wands," reported Luna happily, holding up the bundle she'd gathered before summoning the remaining ones on the floor.

"That was a lot quicker than I thought it'd be," said Ron.

"Real battles usually are," I said.

"What do we do with the stunned ones back there?" asked Hermione.

"Leave them," said Harry. "The Ministry can interrogate them and finally figure out Tom's back."

"I'd better go back and make sure they stay restrained when they wake up," said Ron, running through the door.

"Meanwhile, we'd best get back to Hogwarts," said Ginny. "We still need to find the exit."

No sooner had Ginny said that than a door opened, revealing the corridor we entered through. Apparently one aspect of the security was making sure the only door you could find easily was the way out. Ron caught up with us, reporting he'd transmuted stone bindings on to all the surviving Death Eaters except the one stuck in the loop. He didn't dare approach him, deciding to let the Ministry's experts figure out how to safely retrieve him.

With no further leads on Sirius or the other teachers, we took the lift back up to the entry hall. Neville was back on his feet and in human form. Hermione had revived him using an "ennervate" spell to counter the stun. He was wiping the blood off his face with a sleeve of his robe. The elevator doors opened and we stepped into the atrium.

"Adava Kedavra!"

No one was on tehir guard when the green bolt of the killing curse flew at us from one side. Her speed still enhanced by a Philosopher's Stone, Sloth was barely able to interpose her body in time. As she got back to her feet, blue sparks dancing along her body as she regenerated, we turned toward the source of the spell. With his flattened, noseless face and red slitted eyes, Lord Voldemort had come to do personally what his Death Eaters could not.

"They all just throw themselves into certain death for you, don't they, Potter?" said Voldemort.

I snapped my fingers, and the air that would have been contained in his lungs flared brightly for an instant. Voldermort had dodged the flame alchemy attack that had killed his subordinate by apparating across the room. Six wands launched disarming spells, stunning spells, blasting crses, and body binds at the Dark Lord. He batted them aside with a gesture before firing another killing curse into our midst.

"Avis!" called out Sloth, creating a dozen tiny birds. The killing curse struck a bird, which dropped dead. "Unblockable my ass!"

Voldemort sent a wave of fire twoard us in response, incinerating the birds. I stomped and transmuted a wall for cover. The flames broke upon the wall, with jets of flame briefly visible around either side of the wall.

"Take care of my prophecy, Potter," said Voldemort. "It will be amusing to review it once I pluck it from your cold, dead hands." He apparated to this side of my wall and shot another bright green killing curse at us.

We scattered in all directions, but the curse ricocheted off the wall, and struck me in the back. Several new flocks of birds had been summoned by the time I'd regenerated back to life, and were fluttering every which way, obscuring the battlefield in a mess of feathers. I'd learned something. Not only could you block a killing curse by conjuring something to take the hit for you, but it could be blocked by a transmuted wall. Not the unstoppable super weapon it was claimed to be.

Harry, Ginny, and Luna had adopted their animagus forms and attempted to lose Voldemort in the flock of conjured birds. Ron and Sloth were clapping and transmuting spikes from the floor beneath Voldemort's feet, which Voldemort dodged using apparition. Neville was standing protectively over Hermione, his wand brandished while she was crouched down near my transmuted wall, fumbling with her time turner.

I snapped, burning away the oxygen in the path of Voldemort's conjured flames, so he couldn't burn the birds away again. Hermione vanished, escaping into the past. At the same instant, the lift opened and she returned on it. She'd brought Dumbledore, the teachers Umbridge had brought in for questioning, and Minister Fudge with her. Seeing our backup, Voldemort didn't reappear the next time he disapparated.

Harry, Ginny, and Luna separated themselves from the flock and resumed human form alongside the rest of us. Hermione stepped away from Dumbledore and Fudge, turning to face them side by side with us. Dumbledore turned to Fudge who was stuttering in shock and outrage.

"I trust the evidence of your own eyes is sufficient, Cornelius," said Dumbledore as the teachers got to vanishing the thousand birds we'd conjured.

"Merlin's beard! Him! Here! Here! In the Ministry of Magic!" palpitated Fudge.

"Half a dozen Death Eaters are down in the Department of Mysteries who can give you details," said Harry dryly.

"And you!" exclaimed Fudge, rounding on Harry. "You and your friends! Unregistered animagi, all of you!"

"You'll find I am registered," huffed Hermione.

"Cornelius, they have just now been dueling with Lord Voldemort," noted Dumbledore. "If you cannot see the wisdom in pardoning any rule breaking that may be involved here on the grounds of obviously being on the same side, I invite you to consider whether you have any Aurors in your employ able to take them in."

"I- Well- Obviously," said Fudge.

"My staff, students, and I shall be returning to Hogwarts now," said Dumbledore. "I suggest you dispatch Aurors to the Department of Mysteries at once. Oh yes, you will also kindly remove Dolores Umbridge from my school and return Sirius Black with a full pardon."

"Release Black?" demanded Fudge.

"Harry has already told you Black was not the one responsible for the Potters' deaths. If you insist on calling Harry a liar again, I shall need to personally make a trip to Azkaban and remove him from the dementors myself." There was a hard edge to Dumbledore's voice that even Fudge couldn't miss.

Dumbledore returned us to Hogwarts through the floo network, and dispatched the faculty to restore order. He directed the eight of us to join him up in his office. Once there, he took a communication mirror out of a desk drawer.

"James," he said into it. "Cornelius will be pardoning Sirius. It looks as though the raid on Azkaban will not be necessary."

"Smart of him," said James Potter's voice from the mirror. "I'll tell Lily and Moony."

Setting down the mirror, Dumbledore returned his attention to us. "I suppose now is the time for explanations. Am I to presume it has been your shape shifting dog which has been attending Order meetings since Christmas?"

I nodded.

"And you, Harry, who have organized a portion of the student body into a fighting force willing to defy the Ministry?"

"I had to do something," said Harry.

"That was not a criticism," said Dumbledore, smiling. "The truth of the matter is, you students accomplished far more of value this past year than I or the Order have managed, and I think for that, at the very least, I owe you an apology and explanation."

"You've been guarding this," said Harry, holding out the glass orb.

"If you will set it down on my desk, I shall show you the prize you have kept from the enemy," offered Dumbledore.

Harry did so, and Dumbledore tapped the orb with his wand. A ghostly image of Professor Trelawney appeared and spoke. "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him. Born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the to her, for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."

Professor Trelawney's face vanished behind the glowing silver mist once again. Dumbledore explained that he had been present when Trelawney made that prophecy, as had been one of Voldemort's agents. The agent had heard only part of the prophecy, and it was on that information that he sought out the Potters to kill Harry.

"If you already knew what was in there," said Sloth, "why did you waste people guarding it? Why not just smash it and free up people to go on other missions?"

Dumbledore opened his mouth then closed it again. "Would you believe, the thought never occurred to me?"

"So, it has to be me," said Harry, only now mustering the ability to speak after the explanation. "Either I have to kill him, or he kills me."

"Yes," said Dumbledore sadly.

"You won't be fighting alone," said Ron, to enthusiastic nods all around.

"Okay," I said, "I'm going to get started using these wands to resurrect the Death Eaters' past victims. Now that the Ministry's got its head out of its ass, hopefully they'll be able to resume their lives."

"With Tom acting openly again, we should see about protecting everyone's muggle relatives," said Sloth. "We should move quickly while he recovers from the loss of those Death Eaters. Can the Grangers stay in the castle?"

"He would go after my parents, wouldn't he," said Hermione. "Headmaster, please."

"Wards can be established and protections assigned, Miss Granger," said Dumbledore. "Your family will be safe."

"But doesn't it make more sense to gather up all the families of the muggleborn students in one easily defended place than to assign each of them a wizard bodyguard?" asked Hermione.

"I can use the map so we're sure everyone we take in is who they're supposed to be," offered Harry.

"The castle does have plenty of unused space," acknowledged Dumbledore. "Very well. I shall make the necessary arrangements to shelter everyone's muggle family members in the school."

"The Dursleys are still safe at Privet Drive, aren't they?" asked Harry.

"There is no safer place from Voldemort as long as the blood wards remain in effect," said Dumbledore.

"Then I should go spend my one night there to keep Voldemort out," said Harry.

* * *

Author's comments:  
The Death Eaters were utterly incompetent during the battle in the Department of Mysteries in canon. Given the improved capabilities of the characters, this could be nothing other than a slaughter.


	39. Chapter 53: Two Sides of Immortality

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 53) Two Sides of Immortality  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The remaining few days at Hogwarts were a flurry of activity. Thanks to my time turner, I was cranking out homunculi faster than I had in Liore. Each of the captured wands had been used to kill dozens of people, so hundreds of homunculi were needed. Ron handled the prior incantum and soul attachments while Sloth and I made them bodies. It depleted my red stone supply, but more would be made over the summer.

By the time the three of us emerged form the Chamber of Secrets for the end of term feast, the story of our battle with Voldemort and the Death Eaters was common knowledge. Neville in particular was lauded for avenging his parents by eating the torturers as a lion. Sirius Black was now sitting openly at the head table in the chair formerly occupied by Dolores Umbridge. With their animagus powers now revealed, our wizard friends were at an all time low in terms of the number of secrets they had to keep. Only the details of the DA remained exclusively among members. And no one was mentioning the stolen time turners of course.

Dumbledore made the offer to shelter people's muggle relations at Hogwarts official, to general applause and gratitude. I indulged in the astoundingly satisfying food the house elves had prepared, grateful that I wouldn't need to deprive myself next year in order to keep up with my studies. The war was about to being in earnest, but for the moment, everything seemed to be looking up.

On the train ride home, I produced a set of physically identical replicas of my, Sloth's, and Ron's time turners. I told Ron I'd explain once our OWL results came in. At King's Cross Station, James, Lily, Lupin, Moody, and Tonks were waiting, with a big black dog on a leash.

"Thanks for taking care of Loki for me," I said, clapping and kneeling down to pet my dog. Blue sparks crackled over his fur, as I restored his appearance from a copy of Sirius' animagus form back to his brown furred normal form.

"It was no trouble at all," said Lupin. "He was a lot better behaved than Sirius usually is."

"We've been talking to Arthur and Molly," said Lily, indicating the Weasleys who were nearby. "They're planning to improve the Burrow's security and have invited us to stay with them over the summer once they're finished. I know you aren't happy being cooped up in my sister's house, Harry."

"Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley," said Harry sincerely.

"We're always delighted to have you, Harry," said Mrs. Weasley. "And your friends as well. Mrs. Longbottom and the Grangers have already given permission for Neville and Hermione to visit over the holiday."

"Luna's going on a trip out of the country with her dad this summer," said Ginny.

"Maybe next year," said Arthur.

* * *

There were so many things I needed to do this summer that I would need to be in three places at once to do them all. Fortunately, now that I had my time turner back, that was an option. My first stop was Diagon Ally. I knew the shop I needed would be found somewhere, but it took a while to find.

Finally, down Knockturn Alley, I found what I was looking for. A goblin run silversmith. The goblin behind the counter narrowed his eyes suspiciously when I came in. He quickly brushed a piece of jewelry he was examining behind the counter as I got close.

"What do you want, wizard?" he asked gruffly.

I set the three replica time turners on the counter and asked, "Can you make a housing for these?"

His eyes widened. He recognized them immediately. He forced a neutral expression on his face, then replied, "What kind of housing?"

"Well," I said, "I've been told that the goblins have a method of working with silver that makes it indestructible. Is that right?"

"Of course it is," said the goblin proudly. "You're looking to protect these... objects by encasing them in goblin silver?"

"Protect and disguise," I said genially. "I'd like three silver pocket watches made. They need to be able to open up so the hourglass can be set in and removed, and ideally, I'd like the gold chain on the hourglass to be able to feed through a protective goblin silver chain length as well."

"That's not a simple matter," noted the goblin, eyeing the hourglasses. "You'd need to leave the hourglasses here at the shop so I can form fit the housings for each one. I can definitely do it, though. Once they're done, you'll be able to bash a troll's skull in with them and not risk scratching,much less cracking the glass."

"A few more details, then," I said. "Can you arrange the mountings to rotate the hourglass inside the watch using the winder?"

"I thought you might want something like that," noted the goblin, not taking his eyes off the three fake time turners.

"Glad to hear it," I said. "I'd also like a mounting on the inside lid for a mirror, and for each lid itself to have a house crest for a different Hogwarts house. A Ravenclaw eagle, an Hufflepuff badger, and a Gryffindor lion."

"None of that should be a problem," said the goblin. "Now, there is the matter of payment, both for the craftsmanship and my silence..."

"Money is no object," I told the goblin. "Name any amount of gold you would like,and I'll drop it off when I return to collect the watches."

"One million galleons," said the goblin.

"Done," I said without batting an eyelash.

"Apiece," he added hastily after seeing how easily I agreed to his first offer.

"Agreed," I said just as easily. "When can I pick up the merchandise?"

"I can set aside some of my other projects and get it to you by the end of the week," replied the goblin. "That'd make it a rush order, and those cost double."

"I'll see you at the end of the week with your six million galleons," I told him and walked out of the shop. I knew I was being so overcharged it might as well count as robbery, but as I could make as much gold as I wanted, it didn't really matter to me. Paying it would ensure the goblin's silence about the time turners and demonstrate my trustworthiness.

I produced the necessary quantity of gold after buying a few tons of scrap metal from a muggle junk yard and had it converted to galleons at Gringotts. While I was at the goblin run bank, I had a note of transfer written up so I wouldn't have to carry all that gold down to Knockturn Alley next week, and so there would be no question about leprechaun gold being involved.

While I was there, I restocked my supply of potions ingredients, then I used my real time turner to return to Privet Drive before the others and set up a new underground lab beneath my house, complete with animated armor servants to tend to my crop of philosopher's flowers. I also set up a new potions work space. Now that I had a human derived red stone, I wanted to see if I could adapt the recipe for the Elixir of Life to work using one of those stones instead of a true Philosopher's Stone. I'd had five years of potions training since I'd tried to make the Elixir of Life using a red stone, and it seemed time to give it another try.

Another turn of my time turner, and I was back at King's Cross and joined the others returning to Privet Drive. With Voldemort acting openly now, Harry wouldn't be able to leave the protections of the blood wards until the new security at the Burrow was ready. As such, rather than Harry coming to visit Sloth and I, we'd need to visit him at the Dursleys'. We made plans to do so daily.

I lived each day several times that first week using my time turner. The first day was spent with Harry at the Dursleys, doing summer homework with him and Sloth. I learned that James wholeheartedly approved of our trick replacing Umbridge with Sirius. Lily was against it until she found out about the woman's detentions involving carving lines into our own flesh with a cursed quill. At that point, she offered congratulations all around and swore to murder the woman next time she saw her. I offered her a soul coin to use so as not to be wasteful.

The second time I went through a day, I cloistered myself in my potions work space attempting to solve the method to produce the Elixir of Life using a red stone instead of a Philosopher's Stone. By the end of the week, I confirmed that adding a beozar neutralized the toxic properties of the red water in a human derived red stone and produced an Elixir of Life. It burned through the stone quickly, though, requiring one life's worth of red stone to produce a single dose. I couldn't yet do it using stones produced by the Tringam method, but I was sure there must be a way.

My third trip each day, I spent at the muggle library. This world's math, science, and especially their computer and information technology all offered so much that I wanted to bring back to my world. So much information could be stored on a single compact disk, I was awed. I was practically giddy when I learned I could assimilate the information on a CD the same way I could the information in a book using a red stone.

A regular topic of conversation with Harry and his family was, of course, the war. Now that the Death Eaters were acting openly, reports were coming regularly of attacks, assassinations, and engineered disasters. Pamphlets about security were sent by owl, containing basic tips like how to spot someone under the Imperius curse and suggesting people establish trust passwords in case of polyjuice.

By the time I returned to Diagon Alley to pickup my watches, the place was nearly unrecognizable. Wanted posters of known Death Eaters were in every store window, and hucksters were hawking useless protective amulets from shady stands along the street. Knockturn Alley was almost completely deserted. With all the dark arts shops, the Ministry was presumably raiding it regularly. Fortunately for me, it was just the customers who weren't lingering and window shopping. The shops themselves were still open. I stepped inside the goblin silversmith's shop I'd commissioned.

"I have a note of transfer from Gringotts here," I said, "unless you'd rather I start hauling large, obvious sacks of gold in here?"

"Let me see that," snapped the goblin. After examining the signatures, seals, and other anti-counterfeiting measures carefully, he slowly nodded. Reaching below the counter, he produced three silver pocket watches.

He proudly went over the features, demonstrated how to remove and replace the hourglass, demonstrated the rotation mechanism, and invited me to try to damage one. I drew my wand and first attempted to deconstruct part of the material with alchemy. It had no effect. Next I triggered an explosion in the internal mechanisms, which didn't even disrupt its ability to keep proper time. Finally, I tried various blunt force traumas to see if the hourglass within would crack. Again, the product was just as advertised.

"Thank you for your excellent and speedy work," I said. "I'll be sure to recommend your services for future watch needs."

While he watched, I removed the hourglass from the watch bearing the Ravelcaw eagle and replaced my real time turner inside it. The fake time turner, I tossed in a rubbish bin on the way out. I handed Sloth her watch, bearing the Hufflepuff badger as soon as I got home. We each cut our communication mirrors down to fit and inserted them into our watches, completing the tool.

* * *

The next day, Sloth and I were surprised to see Professor Snape at our door. His muggle dress was more competent than most wizards, having managed a black suit with a tailcoat and cravat which suited him nearly as well as his black wizard robes. He wore a deeply annoyed expression on his face.

"Oren, Tucker," he jerked his head in acknowledgement. "There are matters I must discuss with Harry. May I come on?"

"Sure," I said, "but Harry's next door."

"I realize," said Snape stepping inside and closing the door behind hm. Drawing his wand, he cast a number of defensive and privacy based spells before continuing. "As I am sure you are aware, I am a marked Death Eater, and cannot cross the threshold next door. You will need to bring Potter to me here."

"No," said Sloth flatly. "Harry stays behind those wards until the Burrow's security is finished."

"This is regarding the object in the Lestrange vault," said Snape. "We may not get another chance like this."

I held up the Ministry's security pamphlet. "How do we know you're really Severus Snape?" I demanded. Taking out my new watch I flipped it open and checked the time. "I suppose the first step is to wait an hour to rule out polyjuice."

"Polyjuice can last up to three hours with a large enough dose," snapped Snape. "One hour is the maximum reliable time, but overdoses mean you cannot rely on that limit."

"Obscure potions knowledge," noted Sloth. "Evidence in favor of it really being him."

"So, we wait three hours to eliminate the polyjuice possibility," I said with a nod.

"You're enjoying this," noted Snape darkly.

"Three hours should also be enough time ot notice signs of the Imperius curse," I noted.

"In the meantime, why don't you tell us what you want to see Harry for," said Sloth.

"As all evidence suggests he will tell you whatever I say anyway, I see no point in attempting secrecy," said Snape. "And it will pass the time."

With the Lestranges dead and Lucius in Azkaban, Snape had been feeling out Narcissa Malfoy, Lucius' wife and Draco's mother. Snape had spent a lot of time currying favor with the Malfoys over the years, and all that time building trust was about to pay off. Lucius had recently fallen out of Voldemort's favor, as evidenced by the fact he had not been broken out of Azkaban.

As further punishment for Lucius' failure, Draco had been branded a full Death Eater, only to be handed the suicide mission of killing Dumbledore. Snape believed we could trade our services protecting Draco and his family from Voldemort for the horcrux Belatrix had placed in her vault before her death.

"Okay," said Sloth when he had finished, "what does this have to do with Harry?"

"Aside from the boy's access to a replenishing supply of basilisk venom that would simplify destroying the horcrux when we have it," said Snape, "Narcissa will need proof I am genuinely working against the Dark Lord, and not merely testing her for disloyalty. There will be no question if I show up with Harry Potter at my side."

"You want to take Harry alone into a known Death Eater stronghold?" I asked incredulously.

"Wouldn't showing up with Dumbledore be just as effective?" asked Sloth.

"It would indeed," said Snape, "if I could find him. The Headmaster has taken to going on long trips without notifying the Order where he's going or what he's doing."

"Don't you have any way of contacting him?" I asked.

"He leaves his communication mirrors in his office," said Snape, aggravatedly. "The Order can send secure messages using patronuses, but if whatever the Headmaster is doing requires stealth..."

"We get the picture," said Sloth.

"This is a possibly unique opportunity to retrieve and destroy the horcrux without provoking the goblins," argued Snape. "We have been looking into lines of inheritance carefully, and because of that, we have a very brief window where we know who has access to the vault, but the Dark Lord does not. The bargain might not be possible to strike after today."

"What about using a stand-in for Harry?" I suggested.

"The fact that I am a potions master has not escaped the notice of the Dark Lord and his followers. I expect a similar polyjuice check to be made on Harry," replied Snape dryly.

"Do they have a way of detecting me and Sloth?" I asked. "Any plan that involves risking Harry should be a last resort."

"There are tests they can run that neither you, nor any other imposter could duplicate," said Snape. "Harry's patronus has been seen, and its form is known. I am afraid it must be him if this plan is to have any hope of succeeding."

"If Harry agrees," said Sloth, "he won't be going alone with you. Greed and I'll hide in Harry's hair as fleas so if things go wrong, he'll have backup."

"That's three hours," I said, snapping my watch shut and putting it back in my pocket.

"I'll go tell Harry the plan," offered Sloth. "One of us has to stay with Snape."

I kissed her goodbye and she headed out the door. About an hour later, Sloth returned with Harry. I was having Snape look over my Elixir of Life in the meantime. He seemed confident I'd gotten it right.

"You really think we can get the horcrux?" asked Harry.

"I do," said Snape.

"Let's go, then," said Harry.

Sloth and I temporarily entrusted our wands and watches to my time turned future self down in the lab, then hopped onto Harry's head, turning into fleas mid jump. Snape took Harry by the arm and apparated with him just outside Malfoy Manner. Harry donned his invisibility cloak at Snape's instruction, then both entered.

Pleasantries were exchanged between Snape and Narcissa. After verifying they were alone and would not be overheard, Snape broached the subject.

"I know what the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to do, Narcissa," said Snape.

"I thought you must know about it," said Narcissa. "He trusts you so, Severus."

"I have come to offer you help, Narcissa," said Snape. "We both know the Dark Lord does not intend Draco to succeed in his mission. After Lucius' mistakes, the Dark Lord is very angry indeed."

"Help?" said Narcissa, as though she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Let me make my meaning plain, Narcissa," said Snape. "Helping Draco is a betrayal of the Dark Lord. Draco is to fail in his mission and either die in the attempt or die at the Dark Lord's hand for failure all as punishment for Lucius. I am willing to turn on the Dark Lord for Draco's sake, and I have brought with me tonight, proof of my intentions."

At that, Harry pulled off his invisibility cloak. Narcissa gasped and stepped back, unsure of what she was seeing. As had been explained to him, Harry drew his wand and called, "Expecto Patronum!" A luminous silver stag erupted from the tip of his wand.

"The real Potter? Here? If he finds out he was here, he'd have us all killed for treason," said Narcissa shakily.

"You know he has ordered me to infiltrate Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix," said Snape. "I have Dumbledore's trust and his ear. I can get Draco protected. You and Lucius too."

"There is a price," said Harry.

"What do you want?" demanded Narcissa.

"A token of your sincerity," said Snape. "Proof that you genuinely have turned against the Dark Lord. Your sister's vault contained an object the Dark Lord entrusted to her. Bring it to us and you have my word Draco will be protected."

"Will you take the Unbreakable Vow?" asked Narcissa.

"Of course," said Snape.

"Not you, Severus. Him." She pointed at Harry.

"What's an Unbreakable Vow?" asked Harry.

"A powerful magic from which there is no backing out of," said Snape. "Breaking the terms of an agreement sealed with an Unbreakable Vow is death."

"What do you want me to swear?" asked Harry.

"That you will protect Draco from the Dark Lord," said Narcissa. "That you will do all in your power to keep him safe until the war is over."

"Will you take an Unbreakable Vow to help us defeat Tom?" asked Harry. "Will you sear to retrieve the object we seek, and thereafter provide any information we ask about Tom and the Death Eaters so long as you and Draco are under our protection?"

"I will," said Narcissa.

At Snape's instruction, Harry and Narcissa clasped hands and swore oaths to that effect. With each oath, a stream of fire came out of Snape's wand, which was positioned over their clasped hands, and twined around their hands like a string.

"Retrieve the object now, Narcissa," said Snape. "We will wait. Once you have done so, we will take you and Draco to Hogwarts where you will be safe and Draco can continue his education."

Ten minutes later, Narcissa returned carrying a black bag. Harry opened the bag when she handed it over. It contained a large, two handled cup bearing the mark of Helga Hufflepuff. Replacing it within the bag, Harry turned to Snape.

"Do you think this is what we're looking for?"

"I have little doubt," replied Snape. "Keep it with you when we return to the school. I am sure you know what to do then."

Harry nodded. Narcissa left to retrieve Draco. Dragged into the room by his mother, Draco stopped and stared. His gaze flicked between Snape and Harry, with a look of absolute betrayal. Draco reached toward his forearm where the Dark Mark had been branded, but Harry was too quick for him.

"Petrificus totalus," yelled Harry, and Draco's body froze.

"We can't have you summoning the Dark Lord," said Snape. "I had hoped we could convince you to come with us for your own protection, but I see you insist upon remaining a danger to yourself and others. Potter, with me. Narcissa, carry the boy."

Stepping outside, Snape and Narcissa apparated to Hogwarts, appearing just outside the main gate. Heavy chains were strung across the entrance, which Snape opened with a tap of his wand. We quickly made our way up to the castle proper, and gathered in Snape's office. Snape took his seat and spoke.

"If Draco persists in his escape attempts and in trying to contact the Dark Lord, protecting him from himself will prove difficult and troublesome."

"We could bring him to the Chamber of Secrets," suggested Harry. "Petrify him and revive him when Tom's dead."

"An interesting option," noted Snape, "but I rather expect petrification counts as harm under the terms of the Unbreakable Vow you recently swore."

Harry thought for a moment, then said, "Tom wants him to kill Dumbledore, right? Can't we modify his memory so he thinks that's why his mother took hm here early?"

"I can keep an eye on his attempts using legilimency," considered Snape. "Regular interviews can be undertaken to convince the boy to see reason, and he could be obliviated again afterward if he does not."

"It sounds like the best we can do," said Harry. "Make sure he doesn't endanger the muggle families coming to stay here this year, all right?"

"I shall no doubt be running damage control on the boy's inept schemes all year," noted Snape, dryly. "Now, Potter, if you will excuse us. Make sure to wear your cloak when you return to my office."

With that, Harry headed for the Chamber of Secrets with the bag. Sloth and I hopped off Harry's head and retook human form once we were in the tunnel.

"I know you don't like memory charms," said Harry immediately.

"I don't," I admitted. "But I don't like killing either, and I accept that has to happen sometimes."

"This does sound like a good plan," said Sloth. "We're behind you 100%."

Harry breathed. "Thanks."

"Before we have the Serpent of Slytherin do her thing, let me grab my camera and take a few pictures of that cup," I suggested. "Dumbledore or one of the members of the Order might be able to tell us more about it."

Harry nodded, so I walked through the back wall, into my lab, and retrieved my camera and a fresh roll of film. I snapped a few shots of the cup from different angles, then Harry explained to the basilisk wearing goggles and pink earmuffs what she had to do.

As with the diary, an unpleasant ichor ran from the wound in the cup. It blackened and tarnished starting from where the basilisk fang pierced it, and this fragment of Voldemort's soul was no more. Harry replaced the broken remains in the bag for Dumbledore to look over later. I developed the pictures and put one in the bag with the cup.

Snape was back in his black wizard robes when we stepped out from under the invisibility cloak in his office. Harry handed him the bag.

"One step closer to mortality," said Snape, glancing inside. "We should leave this in the Headmaster's office. Put your cloak back on."

Snape led us back up to Dumbledore's office and set the sack down on Dumbledore's desk. He told the portraits of former headmasters that decorated the office that he needed to speak to the headmaster about its contents as soon as he returned.

"Now, Potter, we will need to use your time turner," said Snape. "That you stole one from the Ministry is obvious. Miss Granger is not the type to engage in larceny without prompting or accomplices. Now, my movements are being observe, so I need to be back where I am supposed to be before I left so I won't be missed."

"Right," said Harry, taking the gold chain from around his neck and wrapping it around the four of us.

Five turns, and the four of us were right outside the Hogwarts gate five hours ago. Snape returned us home, then disappeared himself. His alibi secured, we went into the Dursleys' to report in on our success. It was that successful report that led to James and Lily allowing Harry to go in the first place. I just wished I knew how many more horcurxes Voldemort had.

* * *

Dumbledore arrived at our front door a week later. Unlike Snape, he didn't even bother with muggle dress. His wand hand was injured, shriveled and blackened. He wore a ring on his left hand. The ring was set with an unusual stone. It was engraved with the Deathly Hallows symbol, and was cracked down the middle, along the vertical line representing the Elder Wand Dumbledore carried. It didn't split the stone in two, just cracked the surface.

"I trust the two of you have your trunks packed and ready to go," said Dumbledore.

"We're all set," said Sloth. "Are the Weasleys ready for us?"

"Quite so," said Dumbledore. "We just need to pop in next door and pick up Harry."

"What happened to your hand?" I asked.

"That is a rather long story, I'm afraid, and we are on a schedule," replied Dumbledore.

Next door, Sloth, Loki, Dumbledore, and I met up with Lily, James, and Harry. Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley tried to hide in the kitchen while Dumbledore went over the travel arrangements. James was to take myself, Sloth, and Loki directly to the Burrow. Dumbledore, Lily, and Harry would be making a detour to convince a new faculty member to join the teaching staff, then they would join us.

James apparated us right outside the Burrow, and we were subjected to some security checks before we entered. It was nearly midnight, so we were sent up to bed, me in Fred and George's former room with Neville (the twins were living on their own above their new joke shop in Diagon Alley) and Sloth in Ginny's room with Hermione. Loki curled up at the foot of my bed, and I relaxed and went to sleep.

Harry arrived at some point during the night. When we woke in the morning, there was a flurry of updates exchanged in English and parseltongue. English updates included our successful destruction of the horcrux in the Lestrange vault, with before and after pictures passed around. Harry explained the price and the related Unbreakable Vow in parseltongue. Bill Weasley had gotten engaged to Fleur Delacour. Mrs. Weasley didn't like it, convinced they were rushing into things. Harry told us in parseltongue that Dumbledore was going to be giving him special lessons on Voldemort this year.

At lunch, a small flock of owls arrived, one for each of us entering our sixth year. Nerves were frayed all around as we opened envelopes containing the results of our OWLs. Apparently, the examiners on the practical were more concerned with results than with means. I had passed and received certification in all twelve OWLs. I'd managed top grades in Potions and Divination. Hermione and I were the only ones who'd passed History of Magic. Sloth managed to pass the rest of her OWLs, leaving her with eight total.

"We have our OWLs!" I called out in glee. "Not a drop of magic in either of us, but you're a certified witch and I'm a certified wizard!"

"And you got all of them," said Sloth. "Not even Hermione managed that. I knew you were brilliant."

"Only because she dropped Divination," I said. "She outscored me on everything but Potions and Defense."

Mrs. Weasley was busy congratulating Ron on his seven OWLS when I nudged my way in.

"Actually, Ron earned one more certification last term," I said. "In Amestris, the state offers an exam for alchemists. Those who pass are given access to the state's alchemical libraries, a large research budget, and a high level of authority. As proof of their identities and certifications, these alchemists are each given a silver pocketwatch."

I took the goblin silver watch emblazoned with a Gryffindor lion out of my pocket and dangled it by its chain for all to see. Ron stared at it while his family stared at him. I'd only decided to do this graduation style presentation late last term, so no one could really have been expecting it, even if they were following Ron's progress as an alchemist. I lowered the watch into Ron's waiting hands as I continued.

"I don't have the authority to make you a State Alchemist, since that's a military position, but I can tell you that you were overqualified for it in your third year. I can declare that as of this moment, you are a master alchemist. I've taught you everything I know. All I ask of you in exchange is that you pass on what you've learned."

"I don't know what to say," said Ron.

"You've earned it, Ron," said Hermione, planting a congratulatory kiss on him.

"Don't let her butter you up, Ron," teased Sloth. "She just wants to be the first one you teach."

Hermione blushed, then said, "You are going to be teaching it this year, aren't you?"

Ron blanked and considered. "I suppose if I found time to keep studying it last year, I can manage to teach the basics now that OWLs are done and I'm dropping classes."

"Alchemy's what let you quick grow mandrakes in our second year, right?" asked Neville.

"You can come too," said Ron.

* * *

Between games of Quidditch played in the Weasleys' garden, we got to visit with various members of the Order of the Phoenix over the following weeks. Continuing news of Death Eater attacks convinced several of them to accept my standing offer to make the homunculi. Bill, Charlie, Arthur, and Molly were the first. Lupin was holding off until he could test that lycanthropy cure on himself. There would be a lunar eclipse this year. Sirius accepted after having seen James as good as new, with his animagus powers intact even. Moody considered it, but decided the phase where his soul was attached to the coin left him too vulnerable. Tonks went through with it though. Fleur held off on the grounds I'd never tried this on a part human before.

All that contact with Order members gave us lots of chances to discuss the horcrux situation. Some of the Aurors managed to find out that the cup had been stolen years ago from the estate of a deceased witch. Also stolen at the same time was a locket which had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin. The description of our next target in the horcrux hunt jogged memories.

The locket had been in Grimauld Place. It had been thrown out during Sirius' zealous gutting of the house. Our hopes were raised when Kreacher the house elf admitted to having saved it from being thrown out, only to be dashed by his lament that Mundungus Fletcher had stolen it. The Order members promised to find Mundugns, track whoever he'd sold it to, and deliver the locket to Dumbledore for disposal as soon as possible.

Discussion of how the horcurx came to be at Grimauld Place centered around Sirius' brother Regulus, who had joined the Death Eaters only to be killed after trying to back out. Like Lucius and Belatrix, it seemed Voldemort had entrusted this horcrux to Regulus. No doubt each of them thought they were uniquely honored and trusted as a result.

With further progress in the horcrux hunt out of our hands, we joined Molly on the trip to Diagon Alley to get our new books and supplies. While we were there, we paid a visit to Fred and George's joke shop. It was the only shop in the alley that retained the vibrant, colorful displays that had been present the previous year. Now, those shops that weren't boarded up had displays completely obscured by security notices and wanted posters. All of them except Weasleys Wizard Wheezes.

Inside there was an amazing variety of merchandise. I recognized most of the trick candy as well as the extendible ears, but they'd expanded their range considerably. I had to take a systematic pattern investigating the shop to learn all the potential treasures that lie within. I'd added a full set of hat, cloak, and gloves enchanted with shield charms to my shopping basket when I saw a pink display that made me feel like vomiting and storming off.

Amid all these fun toys and useful tools, there was a display of love potions. No one in the shop was batting an eye at the display. In fact, a large cluster of girls was gathered around the display, giggling to one another and pouring over the many many options present.

"Didn't think you'd have much need for love potions," said Fred conversationally.

"What is wrong with you?!" I exploded.

"What is it, mate?" asked Fred, confused and concerned.

I pulled a love potion off the shelf and threw it at him. The pink bottle shattered on impact. "Supernatural roofies!" I threw another one. The girls around the display scattered. "Magical date rape drugs!" I chucked another bottle at George who'd come to try to calm down the situation. "Why don't you just sell instructions for the Imperius curse and drop the pretense?!"

I was making a scene, but I didn't care. I agreed with Harry about using the Triwizard Tournament winnings to help finance this place. Everything else the twins ever made was funny or useful, and above all harmless. I didn't care that love potions were something people in this world considered harmless fun. I didn't care that I wasn't likely to change that perception on my own. But I'd be damned if I quietly held my tongue when they were being sold out of a shop I helped finance, by people I otherwise thought highly of.

"Mate, let's talk about this in the back," suggested George, reasonably.

Sloth put a hand on my shoulder and I allowed myself to be guided into a back room. While being escorted out, I controlled my breathing and forced myself to think instead of just feel. Fred and George were looking at me with expressions of worry and concern. There was no trace of anger at my outburst.

"I'll compensate you for the lost revenue," I said, my eyes downcast.

"We're not worried about a few smashed bottles," said Fred. "We were going to offer you free merchandise anyway for putting up half our startup gold."

"Admittedly, we didn't expect you to start chucking your free merchandise at us while screaming your head off," said George chuckling. "Now if we could bottle that reaction, we'd have a new top seller."

"Seriously, Greed," said Fred, "what's wrong? You looked like you were having the time of your life until you went off like that."

Looking up at them, I said, "I want the love potions taken off the shelves. Like I said, I'll compensate you for any lost revenue, but I want no part in selling those... things."

"They aren't anything to joke about," said Sloth, squeezing my hand supportively.

Fred stuck his head through the door and called out, "Verity, I need you to pull the love potions off the shelves right away."

"That settled," said George happily, "what do you think of the shop?"

I blinked. "That's it?" I asked.

"Don't get us wrong," said Fred. "We don't make a habit of caving to the demands of moralizing busybodies and stuck up killjoys."

"We're making a one time exception in your case," said George, teasingly. "Partly because you're one of our top investors."

"Partly because you were involved in the deaths of half a dozen Death Eaters and we'd rather not be on the receiving end of that," said Fred gravely. The fact that he was standing in front of a stack of boxes containing Voldemort themed constipation products made the joke, and I couldn't help but laugh.

"Finally," said George. "I thought he'd never crack up."

"Okay, so no more love potions?" I asked. Nods of confirmation came from the twins. "In that case, this is the best joke shop ever."

"And to think, all we needed to make it perfect was to trash one of our money making displays," mused Fred.

"I was serious about compensating you for that," I said.

"Nope," said George. "Anything that would make our investors lose faith in this venture isn't worth selling to begin with. Think of the bad word of mouth we'd be dealing with if you hadn't started yelling and throwing things."

"Besides, that idea for something to make your friends and enemies flip out for a few seconds'll earn us ten times what the love potions ever brought in once we develop it," said Fred.

"That settled," said Sloth, "we can get back to offering you two immortality like we were planning to do this morning."

The twins looked at each other. Then George spoke. "We appreciate the offer. Really we do. But we have to turn it down."

"You see, we're still testing our new products on ourselves," explained Fred. "And as our customers are primarily human, it'd be irresponsible of us to abandon our humanity."

* * *

Author's comments:  
That love potion display always bothered me, and given Sloth and Greed's experiences and issues with mind control, there was no way to leave it uncommitted upon. Fred and George are fiercely independent, but they're genuinely decent, compassionate people. The whole point of the shop is to be a happy place where people can get away from the seriousness of the outside world, and seeing what was basically a PTSD trigger happen over something they're selling got them to bend.


	40. Chapter 54: Life Goes On

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 54) The War Continues and Life Goes On  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

With all of our things ready for our new year at Hogwarts, it was soon time to board the Hogwarts Express. As prefects, Sloth and I had to break off from Harry and patrol the train. When we stopped by his compartment, it turned out Professor Slughorn, this year's new teacher, had invited Harry and Neville to have lunch with him. Harry explained, as we debarked the train, that it had been about mingling with well connected students. Slughorn apparently did something similar when he taught at Hogwarts years ago.

The welcome feast had a lot more people than usual, as muggle parents sat near their children at the house tables. Dumbledore greeted one and all, and I noted that his shriveled hand had not healed. A sign of a wound inflicted by dark magic. After the sorting and the feast, Dumbledore introduced Professor Slughorn properly. He was a very old, very fat wizard, who would be teaching Potions this year. Snape, for his part, would be teaching Defense.

Something was wrong. The Defense position was cursed. Putting Snape in that position was as good as saying he would no longer be needed. Lupin had been outed as a werewolf after nearly killing students, and that had been one of the more pleasant fates of our former Defense teachers. Given Snape's position as a spy for the Order of the Phoenix, the curse striking him could well mean absolute disaster.

The fifth year prefects had led the students to their dorms, so I was able to link up with Sloth and head for Dumbledore's office. We needed to talk. Ignoring the gargoyle and its password, the two of us stepped through the wall and rode the spiral staircase up to Dumbledore's office.

"I must say, I did not expect to see the two of you so soon," said Dumbledore by way of greetings. "To what do I owe this late social call?"

"Snape," I said. "Are you trying to get him killed?"

"Is there some reason I should be concerned about Professor Snape's safety?" asked Dumbledore mildly.

"He's spying on Tom and you gave him that jinxed job," said Sloth. "When the jinx kicks in, the most likely outcome is him getting found out as a spy and killed."

"Ah, so you have noticed the pattern, have you?" said Dumbledore calmly.

"I think the whole school has," I said.

"Then why do you think Professor Snape has not?" replied Dumbledore. When neither of us answered, Dumbledore continued. "You have no doubt heard the rumor that Professor Snape has been trying to get the Defense Against the Dark Arts position for years. He is every bit as aware of the jinx on it as I am. In fact, this is precisely why he has been so interested in the position."

"If he has a death wish, there are easier ways," I noted.

"Quite the opposite, actually," said Dumbledore. "Professor Snape believes that he can have the jinx lifted by taking the position himself."

"Because Tom's the one who put the jinx in place and Snape's still one of Tom's top men," reasoned Sloth.

"Didn't help Quirrell much," I argued, "or Crouch Jr."

"Which is why I have not accepted his request until now," explained Dumbledore. "Now, Lord Voldemort has been restored to hsi full strength, with his magic intact, and has found himself with fewer allies than he might have hoped, making Severus proportionately more valuable. Add to that a plot to have me killed so he can take over the school directly, and we have never had a better time to convince him to lift the jinx."

"This sounds thin," I said. "A lot could easily go wrong with this plan."

"Perhaps, but what's done is done," said Dumbledore. "I expect you'll find Severus a knowledgeable and talented Defense teacher."

"Okay, next question," said Sloth. "What happened to your hand? It's not healing and that says dark magic."

"Quite right," said Dumbledore. "The darkest of all the dark arts, in fact. I managed to locate and destroy another of Lord Voldemort's horcruxes. This withered hand is a result of the defensive curse that was laid on it."

"What was the horcrux?" I asked. "And where di you find it? There might be clues about the others."

"The horcrux was fashioned from a family heirloom from the magical side of Tom Riddle's family, passed down through the Gaunts from the Peveralls. I retrieved it from the Gaunt shack where the last of the line previously lived."

"You didn't tell us what this heirloom was," Sloth pointed out slyly.

Dumbledore directed our attention toward a small table where the ring with the Deathly Hallows symbol rested.

"The Gaunts were Hallow seekers?" I asked.

"I don't believe so," said Dumbledore. "The only value they ever saw in the ring was as evidence of their long pureblood line. Now, I do believe the both of you have an important day ahead of you tomorrow, so unless you have further questions, I would advise you get to bed."

* * *

The next morning at breakfast, I discussed my proposed schedule with Professor Flitwick. I'd applied to continue with all my subjects except History of Magic, which I intended to study independently for the NEWT. The scheduling for NEWT years intentionally included long empty periods in which to study and complete homework, so it wasn't actually a matter of classes overlapping with one another. Flitwick was more concerned I'd end up spreading myself too thin.

Not wanting to explicitly acknowledge my stolen time turner, I argued instead that I didn't need to sleep. Since dream interpretation was finished in last year's Divination class, I would actually be able to exploit this ability this year to keep up with my work load. In the end, he had to acknowledge I had met the prerequisites and allow me to go to my first class.

The only four students going on to NEWT level in Divination were myself, Sloth, and two Gryffindor girls who'd long adored the subject in general and Professor Trelawney in particular. We were doing cartomancy as our first lesson this year, which resulted in me predicting that I would soon be involved in a contest that I must lose or the war would be lost. Sloth's cards kept coming up as omens of doom, which Trelawney helpfully interpreted as she would fall to despair darker than death. As a result, Sloth started wearing her patronus pin everywhere.

The thinned out numbers were a consistent element in all my NEWT classes. Hermione and I had only one other student with us in Arithmancy, and only two others in Ancient Runes. The phenomenon reached its peak when Sloth and I arrived alone to Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class. Hagrid was obviously hurt that his other students, especially Harry, had dropped his class, but he soldiered on. The fact that Sloth and I were the only two students more durable than Hagrid was meant the increasingly dangerous and interesting magical creatures Hagrid had held back for NEWT years could be fully appreciated without interruptions like someone fleeing for their lives or needing to be hospitalized.

In our Defense Against the Dark Arts class, Snape introduced the concept of wordless magic. Thinking the incantation instead of saying it resulted in a spell with less power behind it, but which could be cast quicker and would not give your opponent warning about what was coming in a fight. For Sloth and I, this meant we could finally stop struggling to remember incantations while we emulated spells with alchemy. Harry got into an argument with Snape that landed him in detention before the class was over.

Potions was very differant with Slughorn teaching it. He started by introducing four potions we would be able to brew by the time we finished our NEWT studies with him. Polyjuice, which I was already familiar with, Veritasyrum, the colorless, odorless truth potion I had been drugged with on arriving in this world, Felix Felicis, liquid luck, and Amortentia, the most powerful love potion in the world. Slughorn earned my respect when he took the time to issue dire warnings about the dangers inherent in love potions, calling Amortentia the most dangerous potion in the room. Someone besides me saw the problem with those things.

The Felix Felicis, Slughorn offered as a reward for the student who brewed the best Draught of Living Death. Harry and Ron hadn't had the necessary OWL grade to participate in Snape's NEWT potions class, but were allowed to continue now that Slughorn was teaching. As a result, they had to borrow second hand copies of the potions textbook from the storage cupboard.

I got started preparing my ingredients as I looked over the recipe in my book. The actual brewing went far worse than usual. Having experimented on my own time, it was just the standard difference between the textbook's recipe and Snape's recipes. I pressed on regardless, knowing that even if it was a worse recipe then I'd have gotten with Snape teaching, the book's directions would produce a serviceable potion.

Harry was progressing much faster than the rest of us, eventually prompting Hermione to ask how he was doing it. Harry suggested adding a clockwise stir to our counterclockwise stirring. I tried it, and saw immediate results.

Suddenly, I recalled the prophecy I'd made earlier in the day. Slughorn had made this a contest, and unless I lost, we would lose the war. I ceased adding clockwise stirs and resolutely stuck to the book's instructions, allowing Harry to maintain and build up his lead.

Harry won Slughorn's contest and the reward. A tiny bottle of Felix Felicis, enough for twelve hours of good luck. After the class, Ron questioned Harry on his sudden jump in potions proficiency. Harry explained in parseltongue that the previous owner of his book had scribbled notes and corrections in the margins.

A few more potions lessons conclusively demonstrated the previous owner of Harry's book, someone calling himself the Half Blood Prince, was far more knowledgable about potions than the original author. Harry was happy to share this resource with us, so I used a red stone to copy the Prince's notes from Harry's book into mine, Ron's, and Sloth's. Hermione was unwilling to follow the advice or instructions of a student over those of an instructor or textbook, and as a result was falling behind.

Meanwhile, I made use of the extra time afforded me by my time turner to not only complete the significant amount of homework I was getting, but also to start really doing a comparison study of Snape's old recipes versus those in the textbook. There were principles, theory, rules that Snape was working off of that led him to prepare his potions the way he did, and I needed to understand those principles. They were clearly the same sort of ideas that made the difference in the Prince's recipes.

* * *

Harry's private lessons with Dumbledore began at the end of the week. Meanwhile, Ron was starting to worry himself sick at the prospect of teaching a class of his own. We usually waited until the second week so everyone would have time to get settled in, and get a handle on their schedules, so it would soon be time for him to get started.

"How am I supposed to do this?" asked Ron for the eighth time. "I mean, Hermione's already read every book on alchemy in the library."

"Ron, did I ever show you a single alchemy book when I was teaching?" I asked.

"No," he replied.

"That's because this world's understanding of alchemy is so primitive and backward trying to separate useful concepts from the useless superstitions isn't worth the effort," I said. "If she's going to learn anything about alchemy, it'll have to be through you."

"What about Neville?" asked Ron. "Harry can motivate him, but I've got no idea how he does it."

"Neville wants to learn this," said Sloth. "He's motivating himself. Remember, in a lot of classes, Neville's been worried his magic isn't up to par. Just remind him this isn't magic and he'll be fine."

Harry found us while we were talking and reported what Dumbledore had shown him. Dumbledore had used the penisive to show Harry Voldemort's mother, uncle, and grandfather. Both Slytherin's locket and the ring horcrux were apparently family heirlooms of Voldemort's family. The Gaunts were apparently an abusive, inbred clan of purebloods who so attempted to separate themselves from the rest of society, they communicated almost exclusively in parseltongue.

* * *

The next week, Ron got started on teaching alchemy. He asked for advise again and again, but as his confidence improved, he asked less and less. Snape's Defense lessons turning out to actually be useful, Harry didn't bother with restarting the DA. I did manage to convince Sir Nicholas to resume our fencing lessons now that Umbridge was no longer present. It took us regular meetings the whole week to make up for our year of inaction and get back to where we were at the end of fourth year.

Harry's detention with Snape turned out to have been a ploy on Snape's part to disguise his continuing legilimency lessons with Harry from Dumbledore. As no one would believe Harry needed remedial Defense, Harry would instead be serving regular detentions. While they met, Snape also passed on some important information to Harry. Dumbledore was dying.

"Why? How?" asked Ron when Harry reported this to us after fencing lessons the next day.

"The curse on the ring horcrux wasn't destroyed when Dumbledore broke the horcrux," explained Harry.

"How long does he have?" asked Sloth.

"Snape figures he managed to temporarily contain the curse in the hand Dumbledore touched it with," replied Harry. "He reckons it'll get past what he did to contain it in less than a year."

"If it's contained now, couldn't be amputate his hand and survive?" I suggested.

"Amputate?" asked Ginny.

"A muggle medical technique," I explained. "If a body part becomes infected or contaminated, you cut off the diseased part to preserve the rest and keep the problem from spreading."

"Wouldn't it be better to just make him a homunculus?" asked Hermione.

"We offered it to him along with the rest of the Order this summer," said Sloth. "He turned it down because he doesn't want to be immortal."

"It makes sense," said Luna. "Now that he's got the Resurrection Stone, he'd obviously want to move on."

"The Resurrection Stone?" asked Harry. "How do you figure he has that?"

"He doesn't," said Hermione flatly. "The Deathly Hallows are a story."

"They why is Professor Dumbledore wearing the Resurrection Stone as a ring?" asked Luna. "It fits all the descriptions and has the Hallows symbol engraved on it."

"And in the story," said Neville, "the brother who got the Resurrection Stone used it to summon his dead loved ones. They convinced him to join them on the other side."

"I keep telling you, the Deathly Hallows don't actually exist," insisted Hermione.

"Then how do you explain Harry's cloak?" asked Ron.

"We know some charms don't last long while others can last centuries," said Hermione. "Whoever made Harry's cloak was a talented wizard. Nothing more."

"A talented wizard could make the Resurrection Stone, too," I said. "We know that it's possible to summon the shades of the dead under certain circumstances. We've exploited prior incantum after a killing curse. Studying that phenomenon might lead to other circumstances it's possible in."

"Do you really think Professor Dumbledore has the Resurrection Stone?" asked Sloth.

"There's only one way to find out," I said.

* * *

Unfortunately, Dumbledore wasn't in the school that evening, or the next day. He was spending more time out of the school than inside it. I set my metal spy bugs to inform me when he was back on the grounds so I wouldn't miss him.

Meanwhile, a long anticipated moment came. Professor Flitwick assigned us the protean charm. Two or more objects were to be magically linked such that any change made to one would be reflected on the other. It was actually not possible to duplicate this charm with alchemy. I had reached the limits of my clever work arounds and over complicated tricks. I couldn't do this without magic.

"You knew it had to be this year or next," said Sloth. "Why do you think I dropped Charms? Protean, undetectable extension, hour reversal, fidelius, all charms, and all things alchemy can't do."

"I know," I said unhappily. "It's just we've gotten so much farther than I thought we would. We passed our OWLs. I had to know how much farther we could go."

"Three weeks into NEWT Charms, apparently," said Sloth. "Are you going to drop Charms?"

"If Professor Flitwick will let me, I want to stay on to study the theory."

"You still think you're going to find a way to get magic, don't you?"

"I know there's a way," I admitted. "It may take a century's work and a dozen worlds worth of knowledge, but eventually, I will figure it out. When I do, I want to be able to use it."

"Well, I guess after Ed and Al figured out how to bring a human back to life, anything seems possible in the long run," said Sloth. "Speaking of which, I want to check out the Resurection Stone if Dumbledore's really got it."

"You and me both," I said.

"So, how goes your potions recipe analysis?" asked Sloth changing the subject.

"The red stones were a big help with picking out the pattern," I said. "A lot of it's down to differences in ingredient preparation that would come with experimentation and experience. Most of the rest is down to having a good understanding of what the ingredients actually do when used in a potion individually. Everything left is stylistic preference. Interesting thing is, the Prince and Snape have almost the exact same signature style with potions."

"So, those are notes from someone who took Snape's NEWT Potions class and didn't use his own notebook," reasoned Sloth.

"I don't think so," I said. "The Prince's book has corrections that look like he was working out these principles himself, not like he was copying anything down. I think Harry has Snape's old Potions book."

* * *

Professor Flitwick encouraged me to continue with Charms. My homework scores were as good as ever, and this was the first charm I'd ever failed to master. He suggested, accurately, that I might have fewer issues with the refilling charm we would be studying next.

Hermione finally gave up her objections to using the Prince's instructions once I revealed my theory that Snape was the Half Blood Prince. Harry and Hermione brought in additional evidence supporting my theory, including Harry checking with his father that Snape had invented a spell scrawled in the margins of the book while they were at school together.

Hermione's parents and a few of the other muggles being sheltered at Hogwarts from the attacks outside had joined Ron's alchemy class, mostly for the sake of having something to do. They came out of their first lesson appropriately awed. I was congratulating Ron on his successfully integrating them in with the wizard students when one of my bugs landed on my shoulder. Dumbledore was back in the castle.

I didn't waste time. Asking Ron to keep an eye on Loki for me, I got to Dumbledore's office as quickly as my familiarity with the castle's secret passages allowed. When I walked through his door without bothering to open it, I found him in consultation with the portraits of former headmasters, passing on instructions and other day to day matters involved with running a secret society like the Order of the Phoenix.

"I don't believe I've seen you in my office so often during previous years," said Dumbledore. "You might've at least knocked even if you won't respect the gargoyle."

"I'm sorry, but this is urgent. I'm here to save your life."

"And what danger do you think it's in?"

"The curse Snape contained in your hand is going to get stronger until what Snape did can no longer contain it."

"Professor Snape, if you please," said Dumbledore. "And you are right. All that can be done about it has already been done, however."

"Everything magic can do," I corrected him. "You know my powers are different than yours. They have different strengths and different weaknesses."

"I am still not interested in your promise of immortality," said Dumbledore.

"I thought you might say that," I said. "I'm not here to offer you that again. But I can stop the curse from spreading permanently." I drew my wand. "I've been studying how magic and alchemy interact for most of my time in this world. Trust me, I can stop this curse."

"As I understand it, your powers require detailed knowledge of something before they can interact with it," said Dumbledore. "That is why you could not contain Lord Voldemort's damaged soul. What makes you think you understand the curse well enough to act against it?"

"My powers would be utterly useless if I didn't have some way of analyzing things," I said. "Red stones enhance every aspect of the alchemic process, including discerning compositions. They are imperfect, weaker copies of the Philosopher's Stone after all, and there's a reason one of the names for the Philosopher's Stone is the Red Teacher. Let me see your wand hand."

Dumbledore raised his blackened and shriveled hand. The Elder Wand was clutched in fingers that no longer worked properly. I looked at the hand closely, my wand pointed at the wrist, where Snape's efforts had prevented the curse from spreading beyond. In an instant, a blue blade of alchemic light sprang from my wand tip. I flicked my wrist, and Dumbledore's hand was severed, and dropped onto his desk.

I'd sealed the flesh on either side so no loss of blood would occur. The severed hand dried out and cracked in an instant, crumbling to dust now that the curse was able to work unimpeded by the resistance of Dumbledore's magic. I took the Elder Wand from the pile of dust as Dumbledore processed what I'd just done.

"Now that you're out of immediate danger," I said, offering him his wand back, "we can talk about your options for replacing that hand. Obviously, my offer to make you a homunculus stands, even if I doubt you'll go for it. That silver hand spell would probably work out pretty well, though personally, I'd rather not have to deal with the loss of feeling involved. I could try to restore your hand by mixing you with one or more animals and making you a chimera, but there are significant risks with that, especially at your age."

Grasping the Elder Wand in his left hand, Dumbledore uttered an incantation and conjured a silver hand for himself which affixed on the stump of his right wrist. He tested flexing his fingers for a moment, then put his wand away within his robes.

"There is a risk," said Dumbledore, "particularly with very powerful wizards, that we will become so fixated on our intended course of action that we can overlook a simple solution. You have my thanks, Marcus."

"You're welcome, Professor Dumbledore," I said. "Now, I'd like you to answer a question. Is the Resurrection Stone now in your possession?"

"I had wondered if those of you aware of the Hallows would recognize this for what it is."

Dumbledore set the cracked stone from the ring on the desk.

"You tried to destroy it," I observed.

"I used the Sword of Gryffindor, infused with basilisk venom, to destroy the horcrux within. I accepted the risk that the Resurrection Stone itself might be destroyed in the process."

"Does it still work?" I asked.

Dumbledore gave a sad smile and said, "Yes."

"Why didn't you bring this to me sooner?" I asked. "I can give the summoned shades bodies, bring them the rest of the way back to life. We can stop worrying about casualties on our side. This war'll be impossible for Tom to win if no one on our side stays dead. We can reverse the muggle killings he's made already, bring back those who died fighting him in the last war."

"I would think that if anyone would be skeptical about the Stone's powers, it would be someone who is intimately familiar with the prices and limitations of another Stone offering miracles."

"What are the prices and limitations on this stone?" I asked. "Maybe I'll still be willing to pay when all's been tallied."

Dumbledore gave a defeated sigh. "The spirits summoned are those dead who the summoner loved dearly, and who loved the summoner in return. The Resurrection Stone employs the most powerful and mysterious magic in existence, the unbreakable, eternal bond that is love, to overcome the boundary between life and death. The spirits I was able to interview have told me they are content and at peace with their existence on the other side."

"They're not trapped inside the Gate then," I muttered to myself. It was an incredibly relief. More loudly, I asked, "Do you mind if I ask Luna's mother if she wants the chance to be in her daughter's life? Harry's parents did."

* * *

Pandora Lovegood was invisible from the prospective of an outside observer. The eight of us had gathered in the Chamber of Secrets to carry out the experiment. Luna held the Resurrection Stone, and was telling her mother about the life she'd led since the accident that had killed her.

"I know we'll be together eventually, but I want you to be here to see me graduate, to give me away with dad at my wedding, to meet my friends."

When Luna nodded, Ron clapped and successfully attached the unseen soul to metal using a blood seal.

"This is an intermediate step, Mrs. Lovegood," I said. "I'll be making you a new, flesh and blood body now. We made sure everything was ready in case you said yes."

Once the blonde witch was in a homunculus body that let her properly hug her daughter, I handed the Resurrection Stone to Sloth. She turned the Stone over in her hand three times as Luna had done, then looked up.

"Nothing happened," she said. "Either the Stone doesn't work on people who died outside its home world, or no one I've been loved by is dead."

I hugged Sloth as tears started leaking from her eyes. "People who love you not being dead is a good thing," I said, patting her back comfortingly.

"I know," she choked. "It's just... he didn't love me, did he?"

"No," I said as gently as I could. "You were never a person to Shao. He never realized how precious you are, and that's his loss, his failure as a human being and as a father. I don't think he loved the original Nina either. How could he with what he did to her?"

When she'd cried herself out on my shoulder, we brought the Resurrection Stone back up to Dumbledore's office. It needed to be protected, and plans needed to be made to exploit its powers. Pandora Lovegood left Hogwarts to reunite with her husband.

In the face of all the emotion of the Stone's use, I couldn't really express my own feelings until much later. Father Cornello offered us exactly this in order to entice us into his service. Now here I was, doing for real what Cornello had ruled Liore on empty promises of. The reality of it was so much bigger than it had seemed when I still believed in Cornello and Leto. Not since making a Philosopher's Stone had I been so awed at the power in my hands.

"I'm really happy for Luna," said Sloth over our communication mirrors late that night. "I just wish it hadn't turned out to rely on love. Everyone I want to bring back were near strangers."

"Who?" I asked.

"The people she killed," said Sloth. "I know, I know. I wasn't in control of my actions, but I still remember their faces. The men I helped Karin kill in her soul attachment experiments. The prisoners who were made into red stones for me to eat. I just really wish there was a way to undo all those deaths. I think I'd feel less responsible if there were. Guilt isn't really rational."

"Until we do figure it out," I said, "what do you say we just keep saving the lives we can save and putting an end to this war?"

"Sounds good to me, Greed," she said.

* * *

Harry and the others had reconciled with Hagrid, pleading their overfull schedules. Sloth and I were thrown under the bus as freaks who could do all our homework overnight since we didn't need to sleep. We corroborated that, happy to see Hagrid warm up to our friends once again.

As it turned out, that hadn't been the only thing driving Hagrid's depression. Aragog, the blind leader of the acromantula colony had grown ill over the summer and wasn't recovering. The spider had been around since Hagrid's days in school. In all likelihood, it was dying of old age. I confirmed with Hagrid that my offered immortality would only work on humans, the souls of other magical creatures being largely an unknown quantity.

Snape approached Harry with some information before our scheduled Hogsmeade weekend. Draco had placed Rosmerta, the publican of the Three Broomsticks, under the Imperius curse. Rosmerta had been instructed to pass on a cursed necklace to a Hogwarts student to have it smuggled into the school. We needed to intercept the necklace and free Rosmerta to thwart this attempt by Draco.

This mission was life and death for Harry, as it was unlikely a life sentence in Azkaban was going to qualify as protected under the terms of Harry's Unbreakable Vow. Hopefully, failing in this attempt would convince Draco this wasn't going to work at all, and to accept Snape's offer to leave Voldemort's side in the war and accept our attempts to protect him.

The seven of us allowed in Hogsmeade traveled in a group. Neville, who still had to stay behind, hid under his invisibility cloak and watched Draco, who was serving a detention with McGonagall as an alibi. On our way to the Three Broomsticks, we met Tonks, who was holding Mundungus Fletcher by the collar.

"Got aht locket you ordered, Harry," said Tonks pleasantly. She tossed Slytherin's locket, and Harry caught it. He made to drape it around his neck when Sloth and I each caught him by an arm.

"The ring had a curse on it," I said. "Best put it in a pocket until you can get it back to the castle for disposal."

Harry complied, and we all headed into the Three Broomsticks. When Rosmerta wasn't anywhere obvious, I released a few of my metal bugs to search for her while we took a seat and looked inconspicuous. My bugs reported she was in the bathroom holding a wrapped package in one hand and her wand in the other.

The female members of our party entered the bathroom as a group and fired stunning hexes at Rosmerta. With her incapacitated, Harry, Ron, and I went outside and grabbed Tongs. After swearing secrecy, we told her about Harry's Unbreakable Vow, and how important it was to protect Malfoy until Voldemort was dead. She promised to be discrete with Rosmerta when she took her in to get help.

As Harry had another private lesson with Dumbledore the next day, he held on to the locket so he could show it to Dumbledore before destroying it. Meanwhile, we dropped off the cursed necklace with Snape, who could hopefully use this failure to make Draco see reason.

* * *

I was experimenting with creating a layer of chameleon skin to emulate a disillusionment charm when Harry reported in on his meeting with Dumbledore. Their lesson had concerned Voldemort's childhood in a muggle orphanage. The locket had been examined then destroyed using the Sword of Gryffindor, bringing the total horcurxes destroyed so far to four.

Snape and Narcissa, meanwhile, had successfully managed to convince Draco that Voldemort was setting him up to fail, and to let Dumbledore protect him. He had enough pull to smooth over Draco's use of an unforgivable curse on Rosmerta on the grounds that he and his family were under threat from the Dark Lord at the time. Snape would continue to observe Draco for signs he was backsliding, but protecting him, and by extension Harry, just got a lot easier.

With no more horcrux leads for the moment, and the Draco situation temporarily contained, I refocused back to my studies. The NEWT homework, the resumed daily fencing practice, and my attempts to maintain normal socialization meant each day had about thirty six hours in it for me, but I was happy. The coursework at NEWT level was challenging and my clever applications of alchemy to duplicate spells were being pushed to the limit. Essays on advanced magical theory were finally answering a lot of technical questions I'd had since starting at Hogwarts, such as how one goes about creating a new spell.

News of continuing Death Eater attacks continued tricking in, the one mar on the otherwise enjoyable few months where I could focus on my education. I couldn't think of a way to contribute more than I already was. My abilities didn't lend themselves to investigation, and that would be what was required to find the Death Eater hideouts and prevent more muggle killings. The Ministry had wizards who could capture or kill their targets once they were found.

Harry's legilimency training was progressing under Snape. Harry had progressed to nonverbal use of the ability, and his practice sessions withe me and the others were showing obvious improvement. Harry had a natural tallent for legilimency, and the struggle to keep him out of our minds during training was giving us all the chance to improve our occlumency. Soon, he would be ready to attempt his first conscious intrusions into the Dark Lord's mind.

Harry wanted to act soon, and hopefully end the war soon, but Snape was urging caution in attempting to exploit this link. As a compromise, Harry agreed to hold off on any attempts until Dumbledore finished his lessons on Voldemort. The idea was, it would help him navigate the Dark Lord's mind once he was in if he already had some idea what to expect.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Voldemort's attacks typically came on a timetable resulting in him striking at the end of the school year. Now that our heroes are being more proactive in the war, rather than waiting for him to execute his masterstroke, they're chipping away at Voldemort's power base little by little and strengthening the light side in similarly small steps. Being in school is helping with the morale situation as well, since unlike the tedious, unproductive period in the canonical seventh book, if they don't have any leads to pursue, they can go back to their ordinary studies until another lead materializes.


	41. Chapter 55: Old Enemies Turned Allies

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 55) Old Enemies Turned New Allies  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Things continued on in that vein until the Christmas holiday. Sloth and I had been invited, along with Harry, to share Christmas at the Burrow. The others had also been invited, but they had their own families to spend the holidays with. Molly and Arthur Weasley were putting up Harry's parents so they wouldn't have to return to Privet Drive.

We said our goodbyes and took the floo network from McGonagall's office. The floo network had been disconnected from Hogwarts as part of the added security, only reconnected in single points at predetermined times. It was a tight squeeze with the whole Weasley family except Charlie there, but we doubled and tripled up, eventually managing to make it work.

The Order's efforts to combat the Death Eaters was a typical subject. Sirius and Lupin stopped by during the day, but were still sleeping in Grimauld Place. Lupin had been trying to get the werewolves to abandon Voldemort's cause. Having successfully gotten himself cured during the lunar eclipse, he was offering them a chance for normalcy. Unfortunately, there was a faction, led by the werewolf who had bitten Lupin as a child, Fenrir Greyback, who cared more about avenging themselves on the Ministry for decades of mistreatment than they cared about a normal life.

Bill and Fleur continued with their wedding plans, and Lupin and Tonks were thinking along similar lines. Mrs. Weasley continued to argue both couples were rushing into things, but Ginny pointed out it had been the same with her and Arthur. All this talk of weddings brought my mind back to the Mirror of Erised. Sloth read my expression and cuddled close to me in the Weasleys' living room.

"After graduation," she said, "why don't we stay here long enough to get married ourselves?"

"You mean it?" I asked.

"Of course," she said smiling. "I know it won't be exactly like you saw in the mirror, but I think we can do the important bits. Especially being surrounded by friends who know what we are and are nothing but happy for us."

"I guess we'd better finish off this war before graduation then," I said. "We don't want a Death Eater attack marring our special day."

"Oh please," said Sloth, rolling her eyes. "It would make your day if they tried to crash the after party and we ended the war then."

I smiled. "You know me so well." I kissed her. "Even so, getting the timing that perfect would be just one more thing to worry about. It would be simpler to just end the war before."

"Whatever makes you happy, Greed."

* * *

On Christmas day, after an exchange of gifts in the morning, we were enjoying food and company when Rufus Scrimgeour, the new Minister of Magic after Fudge had been sacked, arrived at the door. After some pleasantries, it became clear he waned to speak to Harry privately. James and Lily accompanied Harry out to the Weasleys' garden. Sloth, Ron, Ginny, and I joined Fred and George at an upstairs window using extendable ears to listen in.

Scrimgeour took his time getting to the point of his visit. None of the Potters helped him along. Eventually, it came out that he wanted Harry to be seen at the Ministry to give the public the impression that the chosen one was coordinating with the Ministry. He made a serious error mentioning Umbridge's suggestion that he'd have an easier time after school if he was already making contacts in the Ministry.

"I should've hunted down and murdered that woman straight away," said Lily, incensed that the woman who'd tortured her son was still with the Ministry.

"Now, Lily," said James pleasantly, "the Minister is here asking for our son's help. I'm sure he wasn't foolish enough to come empty handed. Why, I would guess that the first thing he intends to offer Harry for his cooperation is to imprison Dolores Umbridge in Azkaban for her well substantiated crimes against Hogwarts students. Isn't that right, Minister?"

"Dolores Umbridge is a very high ranking-" began Scrimgeour before Harry interrupted him.

"If you aren't willing to root the criminals out of high positions in the Ministry, you're going to lose this war. The real Death Eaters are all from prominent, important families, and all have high positions so they can be of use to Tom. Arresting folks like Stan Shuntpike is a waste of resources and undermines your moral authority."

"Not to mention how skipping over trials led to my best friend imprisoned for twelve years and the man who really betrayed us to our deaths allowed to roam free," added James.

"It would certainly look a lot more like Harry was working with the Ministry if the Ministry actually listened to what he had to say," added Lily icily.

It was hard to believe the Potters weren't running the Ministry before their deaths with how effectively they pressed their advantage with Scrimgeour. They were the best advocates Harry could ask for. By the end of it, they'd talked Scrimgeour into arresting Umbridge, releasing Shuntpike (the Knight Bus driver who'd been swept up by the Ministry in an effort to be seen doing something), repealing Umbridge's antiwerewolf legislation, and conducting a thorough house cleaning of the Ministry to identify Death Eaters and their servants. All Harry needed to do was give an interview with the Daily Prophet announcing these new policies.

When Scrimgeor left and the Potters came back inside, they were met with a round of applause from those of us who had been listening in. None of them were upset we'd overheard, and it was broadly agreed they would do the same in our position.

James and Lily made sure they were present for Harry's interview and manged to keep it on point. Harry was gleefully regaling us with the story when he got back, musing about how much better that Rita Skeeter, Triwizard Tournament business would have gone if they'd been there for that.

* * *

Upon our return to Hogwarts, there was a sign up sheet for Apparition lessons in our common rooms. It was a twelve week course held on Saturdays. I signed up at once. I knew I could travel vast distances within a world by using the Gate, and some extra practice might help me refine that ability as all the other magic lessons had helped me refine other aspects of my alchemy.

In Potions the next day, we were called upon to use our wands for the first time in that class. We were working on antidotes for mixed poisons, and the spell would allow us to identify the components. Fortunately, that was well within the range of things I could use a red stone to help me determine. Not only did I come out ahead on the exercise, the only one to successfully brew an antidote, but I also got some new ideas on how I might try to brew the Elixir of Life using plant derived red stones.

Harry'd had another lesson with Dumbledore, which covered Voldemort killing off the muggle side of his family, and Voldemort asking Slughorn about horcruxes when he was in school. Slughorn had tampered with the memory he provided Dumbledore, causing parts to be unreadable. As homework, Dumbledore tasked Harry with retrieving the full memory. He suspected that long ago conversation might shed some light on the pattern to Voldemort's horcruxes.

This was the reason Slughorn had been brought in to begin with. Legilimency wasn't the answer. If it had been, Dumbledore could've done it himself. It had to be down to something about Harry. I wasn't the only one who thought the bottle of Felix Felicis I'd lost to Harry because of a prophecy might be the key. Harry himself, not wanting to waste the resource, decided to make an attempt or two on his own merits before resorting to the potion.

The result was Slughorn canceling his social gatherings and avoiding Harry outside of classes. Knowing how close the rest of us were with Harry, Slughorn took to avoiding us as well. Eventually, Harry ran out of options.

"Look, we'll make more," I said after Harry's third failed attempt to talk to Slughorn.

"It'd be great to have a stock of it," noted Ron.

"It takes abotu six months to stew, so I can have the first batch ready in time for our summer break," I said. "Meanwhile, I don't think anything else you might want to use it for until then is as important as that memory."

"Okay," said Harry. "Okay, I'll use the potion. The bottle I won from Slughorn has enough for twelve hours. I shouldn't need all that time, so there'll still be some left in case something comes up."

"In the meantime, we need to beef up security in the Chamber of Secrets," said Sloth. "If a Death Eater manages to raid our Felix Felicis stock, it'll be worse than when one raided our polyjuice stock."

"It's in Hogwarts, behind a parseltongue locked secret passage, guarded by a thousand year old basilisk, with the lab behind a fake wall that doesn't open," said Ginny incredulously. "How could there even be more security?"

"You know how we've been using the Marauder's Map to make sure everyone who comes and goes from the castle is who they say they are?" asked Sloth. "I want to take it a step farther. We make an armor servant to monitor the map and everyone's comings and goings at all hours of the day and night and report anything suspicious.

"Moody would be proud," said Harry, handing over the map.

* * *

"Six horcruxes total," declared Harry the next time we saw him. "There's the four we already dealt with. Dumbledore thinks Tom's snake Nagini is a horcrux too. He figures the last one is an artifact of either Godric Gryffindor or Rowena Ravenclaw. He's got some sort of lead on the last one, and he's promised to take me with him when he goes to destroy it."

"He's checked the hat and the sword, right?" verified Sloth.

"Yeah," said Harry. "And he can't think of any other known artifacts from Gryffindor."

"Maybe he used the Lost Diadem of Ravenclaw," suggested Luna.

"It's called the Lost Diadem because no one knows where it is," argued Hermione. "It hasn't been seen since the founders' time."

"Which makes it a good choice, since no one would have noticed it going missing when Tom took it," replied Luna.

"Whatever it is, hopefully, Dumbledore figures out where it is soon and we can end this," said Harry.

"That'll just leave the snake, then Tom can be killed," said Neville.

"Of course, even with all his horcruxes destroyed, someone still has to fight him and win," I said.

"Someone?" asked Harry. "You heard the prophecy. It's going to have to be me."

"True," I admitted. "Just don't think you'll be fighting that battle alone. We're still going to be there to arm you as best we can and make sure none of his Death Eaters can back him up when the time comes."

"Does arming me include making me immortal?" asked Harry.

"You know the offer's always on the table for you," I replied. "If you don't want to wait until you're officially of age, say the word."

"I suppose it isn't that far away," Harry admitted.

"We're all behind you," said Ron firmly.

* * *

The Apparition lessons took place in the Great Hall. The wards had been lowered in that area, so students could apparate from one point to another inside the Great Hall. Attempting to apparate out of the castle from the Great Hall, or vice versa, was still impossible, implying that apparition actually involved crossing the intervening space somehow, and that you couldn't apparate if your path took you through a warded area, even if both the start and end points weren't warded.

The actual lessons were very much trial and error based learning. After less than a minute's worth of instruction, we were asked to try it. We were to apparate a short distance, under observation by the Ministry's instructor and our heads of house. If we splinched ourselves, and left any body parts behind, the instructors were on hand to quickly reattach them. Our first lesson saw no successful apparitions, and one splinching, which was quickly put right.

Down in my lab after the lesson, next to my large, stewing cauldron of Felix Felicis, I was seated at my desk going over my notes on the Gate. The core problem with using Gate travel to mimic apparition was that the time inside the Gate, fighting off the Gate Children and navigating to my destination would not look instant to an outside observer. I needed a way to make the process faster and safer.

I knew from Thule's experiments that faster and safer were related. That was why the small jet aircraft that had taken Edward through the Gate had been completely unaffected, while the slower airships had been made completely unrecognizable during their transition between worlds. This world's understanding of rocketry put Thule's to shame. I could produce an effect based on that knowledge that would accelerate a traveler fast enough to avoid the grasping hands of the Gate Children.

The trouble was opening the Gate on the other side. My previous experience involved using the Truth pouring through me to navigate to my destination. Properly emulating apparition would involve encoding the destination and the path through the gate to reach it into the initial alchemy used to open the Gate.

In the Chamber of Secrets, I prepared two arrays. Sloth and I would both open the Gate at the same time, and I would attempt to map the path between. After several runs of the experiment, I would attempt to send an object though along a predetermined path, and out at the selected location. Once I could do this, it would be a simple matter to do it to myself.

The experimentation process was such that both Sloth and I ended up spending twenty four hours of every day for the next month working on this. It would have no doubt taken far longer if our background knowledge about the Gate had been less. Finally, in early February, we had it.

I clapped my hands, and a blue transmutation circle appeared over my head. It slid down my body in less than a second. An identical circle appeared elsewhere in the room, and slid up, revealing me, with my hands still clasped, before disappearing above my head. I could only use this method to travel within a single world, but not only did the process mean I was safe from the Gate Children while doing so, but my exposure to the Truth was also limited, reducing the disorientation of Gate travel. Another advantage was that wards against apparition didn't stop this, akin got how they were ineffective at stopping phoenixes and house elves.

* * *

Spiders kept making appearances in my predictions in Divination class. If I was reading the signs right, who's side the spiders came down on was going to matter. I was still holding a grudge against Aragog and his brood for trying to kil us, and I expected the feeling was mutual with the number of acromantula I killed getting us out.

"Hagrid, can we talk about Aragog?" I asked in Care of Magical Creatures.

"He's been getting worse," said Hagrid with a tremble in his voice. "I been bringing him grubs, but lately he's been eating less and less."

"Did he ever tell you what happened when you were in Azkaban a few years back?" I asked.

"Why do you have to go bringing that up at a time like this?" asked Hagrid. "He knows he did wrong, and he regrets what happened."

"I just need to know he'll never let something like that happen again," I said. "Especially if I'm going to give him this." I took a vial of red liquid from my robe's inner pocket.

"What's that?" asked Hagrid.

"The Elixir of Life," I said. "My Philosopher's Stone was destroyed back in first year, so this is actually experimental. I can't go into details, but I'm pretty sure this has the same properties as an Elixer produced by a real Philosopher's Stone. I could only procure the ingredients for this one dose, and I don't want to waste it."

"Do you think if we save Aragog, we can get him and the acromantula colony in the forest properly on our side in the war?" asked Sloth.

"I can vouch for Aragog," said Hagrid immediately.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to him directly," I said.

"We can go now," said Hagrid.

So, the three of us entered the Forbidden Forrest. Hagrid led the way to the acromantula colony. With Hagrid with us, none of the spiders attacked as we walked up to the web done. I couldn't make out much of the chatter among the massive crowd of giant spiders,but I got the sense some of them recognized Sloth and I.

Aragog was too weak and too ill to come out of his den, so the three of us went in. His white, unseeing eyes were watery and crusted. The grey hairs that covered his body had thinned and fallen out in patches. His legs were too weak to support his massive bulk.

"Aragog," called Hagrid gently, "are you awake?"

"I am, Hagrid," replied Aragog. His voice sounded as weak as he looked.

"I brought someone with medicine that might make you feel better," said Hagrid, placing a comforting hand on the creature's body.

"Do you rmember me, Aragog?" I asked less gently. "The last time we met, I warned you to call off your children. You didn't listen and some of htem died."

"I remember," said Aragog.

"If I give you the medicine, I'll have your word that you and your children will do no harm to the inhabitants of the castle. Not the students. Not the staff. On the grounds. In the forest. Or right here in the center of your nest. Are we agreed?"

"You're not asking for their help defending the castle?" asked Sloth.

"The signs say they can't help but get involved," I explained. "If the Death Eaters go to lay siege to the castle, they'll want to set up camp in the forest. They'll either end up fighting the acromantula, or they'll try to get them to fight us. Aragog's word they won't harm our people is enough."

"You have my word," said Aragog.

I raised the small bottle of blood red elixir to the giant spider's mouth. The effect was instantaneous. Grey hairs darkened. Wasted limbs thickened. His body seemed to inflate and I only then noticed how thin he'd become. As the king of the spiders rose to his feet, the thick white cataracts that had blinded the giant spider long ago faded away, leaving his eight eyes black and healthy.

"Aragog?" asked Hagrid.

"I am well, Hagrid," said Aragog, his voice strong. "Thank you for bringing them to me."

"Now, don't you go making me look like a fool for taking them round," said Hagrid as he wrapped his arms around Aragog's head and shed enormous tears into his fur.

"I do regret what transpired between us years ago, friends of Hagrid," said Aragog, "and not just because of the children I lost that day. You came to me seeking to help Hagrid, nad for that reason alone, I should have restrained my children."

"Why don't we call this a fresh start?" asked Sloth.

Aragog nodded as Hagrid continued to sob tears of relief that his old friend would be all right. If he could let go of the old grudge when his side had suffered the worse end of what happened, I decided I could do the same. Still, for the sake of making sure, I raised my voice and said one more thing as we prepared to depart.

"I hope, for their sake that your children will be bound by your word, Aragog. Because if they choose to forget this new promise of friendship, they should know that the castle and those within it are under the protection of Salazar Slytherin's basilisk."

"A bit unnecessary, don't you think?" asked Hagrid as the entire colony fell silent and stepped back a pace.

"The last time I was here, they ignored a warning from me," I said. "I'm hoping they remember what happened then when the Death Eaters come to lay siege."

"Speaking of which," said Sloth as we headed back to the castle, "you should make plans to evacuate the acromantula and the centaurs to the protection of the castle before that happens."

"They barely tolerate each other when they've got the whole forest to share," said Hagrid. "You'll never get them to stay cooped up in the castle together, and that's forgetting that they don't like humans much either."

"The point of a castle is to be a place to evacuate people nearby to in times of danger," I said. "We have to try."

"You're good people," said Hagrid, pulling both Sloth and I into a firm bear hug.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Use of divination as a plot device to motivate characters into an action they wouldn't otherwise be inclined to do is something best used sparingly. Still, if it's not used at all, there's not much point to the ability existing in the first place.


	42. Chapter 57: A Change in Leadership

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 57) A Change in Leadership  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Ron's birthday was on a Hogsmeade weekend. Tonks knew about the Unbreakable Vow Harry'd made, so she was keeping watch over Draco as well as Harry while we were out of the school. Fred and George were in Hogsmeade looking into expanding their business with a location that was Hogwarts adjacent.

I maanged to get Ron away from the improvised party in the Three Broomsticks long enough to remind him that since he was of age now, he might consider getting his homunculus body and no longer relying on the silver arm Dumbledore had conjured. He agreed that we'd do it that night before returning to the festivities.

We met in the Chamber of Secrets. I would perform the human transmutation and make the soul attachment for him, since doing this on your own is only recommended if you have no one you can trust. I started by transferring Ron's soul into a coin, then I added some material to a pile on top of his corpse. I opened the Gate and made his new body, successfully fending off the Gate Children as I did so. The twisted creature I'd produced was taking labored breaths. I attached Ron's soul and started getting red stones into his mouth as fast as he could eat them.

"How are you feeling?" I asked when he'd regained human form.

"That hurt so much more than getting my arm ripped off in the first place," said Ron.

"I know," I said empathetically. "When I did it, I didn't have anyone to feed me red stones. Took me weeks to cross the room and figure out how to feed myself."

"I feel okay now," added Ron. "So, I'm like you now?"

I pointed to the oroboros mark on his stomach. "I waited on Hermione since I thought you'd want to do it. Make sure you have enough red stones in you to regenerate whatever they take from you."

"There's no way to skip over the painful first part, is there?" confirmed Ron.

"No," I said. "The soul needs to be attached at that point or the body won't know it has to eat. Or worse, it will know because you made a mistake and made it independently sentient instead of a blank vessel for a soul."

"Right," said Ron.

Suddenly, Moaning Myrtle burst in. "Professor Snape's outside. He says he needs to come in and talk."

"It's after midnight," said Ron, checking his watch. "Is he here to give us a detention for being out so late?"

"He wouldn't need to come down here to tell us that," I said. "Hell, I doubt the hourglass can detect points being taken away behind all Slytherin's wards."

"It's definitely him," said Ron after a quick look at the Marauder's Map. "I guess we'd best let him in."

Myrtle led us back up the pipe to where Snape was standing in the bathroom. His eyes were darting around to every corner. I'd never seen him so nervous. I dreaded finding out what could so unnerve a man who could keep his cool spying on Voldemort. Myrtle resumed her watch as Ron and I led Snape into the Chamber of Secrets. Snape didn't say a word until the heavily warded doors were locked behind us.

"Are we alone?" asked Snape.

"Just the three of us and Slytherin's basilisk," I said, pointing at the giant serpent in mirrored goggles and pink earmuffs.

"With all his resources, Professor Dumbledore was never able to penetrate this place," said Snape. "We'll have to hope it remains secure from his observations."

"Why do we need to hide from Professor Dumbledore?" asked Ron.

"Because the headmaster is trying ot kill Harry Potter," said Snape. "It's been part of his plan to defeat Tom all along. Harry is a horcrux, and Dumbledore intends him to die to make Tom vulnerable."

"That's insane," I said. "There's got to be another way. Maybe use the Resurrection Stone somehow."

"Wait, how can Harry be a horcrux?" asked Ron. "And if he were one, why would Tom try to kill Harry as often as he did? Wouldn't he want to keep Harry safe?"

"The Dark Lord does not know," said Snape. "When the curse he tried to use on Harry years ago backfired, a piece of his soul broke off and attached to Harry. Tom's soul was so unstable from his previous horcruxes that he didn't notice."

"That makes sense," I said. "If Dumbledore's right about the order, Tom had five horcruxes when he tried to kill Harry. A soul in six parts will be drawn to a more stable equilibrium of seven."

"Why?" asked Ron.

"Think of it like valence electrons," I told him. "In six parts, his soul gravitated toward the most magically stable configuration during the shock of his curse backfiring. This is evidence in favor of the theory on the number of horcruxes."

"As fascinating an intellectual exercise as this is, perhaps we could return to your friend being targeted for death by the two most powerful wizards in the world," snarked Snape.

"Obviously we're not letting that happen," said Ron.

"Okay, the first step is to verify Dumbledore's theory," I said. "If Harry really is a horcrux, his soul will be quantifiably different from normal and won't be able to attach it to a coin, same as I couldn't do to Tom."

"Which means he can't become a homunculus," said Ron.

"Which will leave him more vulnerable to the two powerful wizards who want him dead," said Snape.

"We can convince Dumbledore there's another way," I said.

"Such as?" asked Snape.

"Off the top of my head? Have Harry make a horcrux using the piece of Tom's soul, then immediately destroy that horcrux," I suggested.

"The requirements for splitting the soul is murder, not mere killing," noted Snape. "Even if Potter had it in him, how would you control which piece broke off?"

"Are you on Harry's side or not?" snapped Ron.

"I have spent the past fifteen years working to keep the boy alive," declared Snape.

"You only met him five years ago," I said.

"There are things you don't know," said Snape.

"Okay, the real first thing we have to do is tell Harry," said Ron. He pulled out his communication mirror.

"We should call in the others too," I said. "Along with anyone who's more loyal to Harry than Dumbledore."

* * *

Within an hour, a large round table with chairs had been set up in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry, Hermione, Neville, Sloth, Luna, and Ginny had been the first to arrive. James, Lily, and Sirius were the next to arrive, having clearly dropped whatever they were doing to answer the summons. The Weasleys were close behind: Arthur, Molly, Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, and George. Fleur came with Bill. Lupin and Tonks were the last to arrive.

"All right, we're here," said James. "You said this was about Harry being in danger."

"No one passed on word about this meeting to anyone not on the list?" I verified.

There were general murmurs of assent.

"What I have recently learned," began Snape, "goes back to the day the Dark Lord's curse backfired. When the Dark Lord was torn from his body, a piece of his soul came loose and attached itself to Harry. His ability to speak parseltongue by instinct and his unique connection to the Dark Lord's mind are because he is an unintentional horcrux."

"How do you know that?" demanded Bill.

Snape replied, "Professor Dumbledore has known since that night, and has gathered more evidence in the intervening years. Tonight, he confided in me."

"But if I'm anchoring Tom's soul to this world..." said Harry.

"Dumbledore intends for you to die to make the Dark Lord vulnerable," finished Snape.

"I did not die for Harry just so he could be sacrificed to win a war," shouted Lily.

"Nor did I," added James.

"Everyone here would give hteir life for Harry," said Snape. "That's why you were the ones called."

"What do you mean?" asked Fleur.

"We brought you here to help us save Harry from Tom and Dumbledore," I explained.

"Not to question your word, Severus," said Arthur, "but do we have any proof of this?"

"Those of you who've become homunculi know what this is," I said, holding up a soul coin. "It only works on a subject who has one point zero soul. It doesn't work on Tom because he split part of his soul off to make his horcruxes. If this is right, it won't work on Harry either, because he'll have one point something instead. His own soul, plus the fraction of Tom's."

I slid the coin across the table to Harry. He gingerly picked the coin up by its edge, then steeled himself and pressed it to the back of his left hand. Nothing happened. Harry was a horcrux.

"Well, I think we all know what we have to do," said Lily as she got to her feet and drew her wand.

* * *

A slew of lethal and disabling curses filled the air in Dumbledore's office. Fawkes was hit early, bursting into flames and emerging from the ashes as a tiny chick. Dumbledore himself had been bending down behind his desk to retrieve a dropped quill when our party kicked open his door.

"You aren't getting my son killed!" yelled Lily as she obliterated Dumbledore's desk with a reducto curse.

Dumbledore threw up a shield spell and yelled back, "I can explain!"

"Adava Kedavra!" yelled Snape. The green bolt of death missed Dumbledore's head by a hair's breadth.

"Please, if you will just listen," Dumbledore said as he blocked, dodged, and evaded the curses that continued to fly.

Fleur extinguished Dumbledore's fireplace while Hermione went around putting unbreakable charms on Dumbledore's windows, cutting off his means of escape. The number of curses filling the air made it look like there was a fireworks display going off. Somehow, Dumbledore managed to duck, dodge, avoid, or block every spell. On the plus side, doing so left him too busy to counterattack.

"I presume you told them about Harry, Severus?" asked Dumbledore.

"Yes. Sectumsempra!" A deep gouge was cut into a bookcase behind Dumbledore's head by Snape's curse, as though it had been cleaved with a sword.

"Harry's going to live through this war!" yelled James, firing another near miss at Dumbledore.

"I broke out of Azkaban to protect him," declared Sirius as he unleashed a wall of cursed fire at Dumbledore. The flames molded themselves into a snarling approximation of Sirius' animagus form and leapt at Dumbledore, who performed the countercurse and extinguished the flames.

"There are things I haven't told you, Severus," said Dumbledore, ducking under a red stunning hex.

"What else is new?" shouted Snape in frustration as he sent another green killing curse at the headmaster.

"Anything we need to know, we can figure out for ourselves," declared Lupin launching a disarming spell.

"There is a way to destroy the horcrux without permanent harm to Harry," Dumbledore said as he waved between two sectumsempra curses fired by Snape and Lily.

"If that's true, why wasn't that your plan to begin with?" demanded Charlie as he launched a coordinated set of stunners with Bill and Percy which Dumbledore blocked with a shield charm.

"That was my plan," said Dumbledore as he hopped to avoid a curse from Fleur that had been aimed low in an attempt to get under his guard.

"You told Snape otherwise," I noted, transmuting a nest of spikes from the stone floor under his feet. Somehow, the old wizard's body ended up contorted between them, rendering him immobile but unharmed. My spikes got in the way of the remaining curses, losing large chunks of their mass from the impacts. Not only did they shield Dumbledore from the curses, but they broke apart immediately once they had done so.

That was not skill. That was not Dumbledore's wand being faster and stronger than any other wand. That was luck on a level that had only one explanation. As the curses stopped flying, Snape asked the question that had already formed in my mind.

"How long have you been taking felix felicis?"

Straightening up and smiling now that the situation had switched from lethal curses to conversation, Dumbledore said, conversationally, "A shade over fifty years."

Lily was the first to recover from the fits of sputtering to declare, "Albus, that's impossible! Felix felicis is toxic in those quantities!"

"True," said Dumbledore as he waved his wand and repaired his splintered furniture. "Giddiness, recklessness, dangerous overconfidence. Pleasant as the first side effect may be, the later two have killed more wizards than all the dark lords in history combined. The trick, I've learned, is not to stop drinking it."

"Because the luck you get from the potion shields you from the consequences of your reckless overconfidence," finished Sloth.

"Fifty years" said Arthur Weasley. "That would mean..."

"I began my regimen just before my duel with the dark lord Grindewald," finished Dumbledore.

"So your potion and his wand canceled each other out," I guessed.

"I was always a shade more skilled than he," said Dumbledore.

"Can we get back to the subject of removing the horcrux without killing me?" asked Harry.

"I had hoped to accomplish considerably more than just saving your life, you understand, Harry," began Dumbledore. "Had you trusted me to see this through believing you would die, that act would have broken Lord Voldemort's power more completely than it was when he failed to kill you. That act of self sacrifice for the sake of your friends, family, and all those you love would have granted them the same protection your mother's sacrifice gave you. You had to remain ignorant for it to work. You had to believe you were dying for their sakes to trigger the protection."

"That explains why you didn't tell us this straight away," said James. "Now that's no longer possible, it's time you explained the rest."

"Do you recall the blood ritual Lord Voldemort used to restore himself?" asked Dumbledore, taking a seat. "Using your blood, Harry, strengthened the connection between you, and as a result, he serves as just as much of an anchor to you as you do to him."

"So, he's like a horcrux to me too?" confirmed Harry. "When I die, I'll... linger... as a shade like him? 'Less than the meanest ghost'?"

"Better, Harry," said Dumbledore, smiling broadly. "Unlike Lord Voldemort, your soul is intact, and that opens up options for you that he gave up in his pursuit of immortality. If your body were still intact, as is the case with say, the killing curse, you could, in theory, just open your eyes back up and get on with life."

"You couldn't have prepared that," said Tonks.

"No, I couldn't," said Dumbledore. "At first, my intention was simply to delay Lord Voldemort's return indefinitely, or at least until a way to vanquish him without destroying his horcruxes was found, since I couldn't ask Harry to die for the cause. Then Sybill's second prophecy came and Wormtail escaped, and I feared there might be no choice. Then Lord Voldemort's choice of ritual and sacrifice came, the absolute greatest stroke of luck in my career. That's when I started seeking out the other horcruxes in earnest."

"Which explains why you took so long," said Molly chidingly.

"Okay, so, once the other horcruxes are destroyed, someone removes the one from me with a killing curse, and then we can finish Tom," said Harry. "If we're right, we only have the snake and one more to go."

"Why not confirm that, Potter?" asked Snape.

"What do you mean?" asked Harry.

"I mean, you've reached the point in your legilimency training that you can attempt to exploit your connection to the Dark Lord and attempt to penetrate his secrets," said Snape.

"You have been teaching Harry legilimency, Severus?" said Dumbledore in a disappointed tone. "I told you no good could come of such an attempt."

"I just tried as hard as I could to kill you," said Snape. "It really should be obvious I'm not obeying your orders anymore. And I especially don't trust in the good judgement of a man who's been on felix felicis for fifty years."

"Speaking of which, Harry should take some before the legilimency attempt," I said. "Give him every advantage we can while he's in there."

"Just during those tries, though," warned Neville. "You don't want to get dependent on the stuff."

"Can I ask a question?" asked Luna. "How did you beat a wand made by Death with a good luck potion?"

"I don't believe any of the three Deathly Hallows were truly made by Death," said Dumbledore. "I believe the three brothers in the story were the Peverell brothers, and that rather than win them from Death, they made them themselves."

"Does anyone else have anything they need to say?" asked Lupin after an awkward pause.

"I do," said Dumbledore. "As Severus pointed out, you all tried to kill me. I can't really expect you to follow my orders after that. So, I believe it is time I retired as the head of the Order of the Phoenix. I will, of course, remain at your disposal in the continuing effort to defeat Lord Voldemort, and with your leave, I shall resume my pursuit of the remaining horcrux."

"Yes, that would be lovely, Albus," said Lily without a trace of irony. "Meanwhile, Severus, would you mind terribly waiting until tomorrow to start having Harry probe the Dark Lord's mind. It is a school night and we've kept Harry up late enough as it is."

* * *

Author's comments:  
All the lucky breaks that seemed to dry up for the heroes after Dumbledore's death. All the improbable plans that no human being could have possibly thought through in the detail required. And the childlike giddiness Dumbledore always displayed. Frankly, felix felicis seemed like the only way to make sense of all this without resorting to the evil Dumbledore hypothesis, which I never really liked.


	43. Chapter 58: The New Plan

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 58) The New Plan  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

There was no further discussion of our attempt to murder Dumbledore, and apparently no hard feelings. When I asked a couple days later, he said that our hearts had been in the right place and admitted it hadn't looked good. After that conversation, he was back off pursuing his lead on the horcrux.

Harry, meanwhile with considerable legilimency practice under his belt, and a carefully calibrated dose of felix felicis administered by Snape, had been able to tentatively confirm the six total horcruxes theory. Or rather, the six plus Harry theory as he also corroborated Dumbledore's belief that Voldemort didn't know Harry was a horcrux. They didn't dare probe any deeper and risk Voldemort realizing Harry was there and looking for horcrux information specifically.

Classes continued as though Harry hadn't just usurped Dumbledore as the de facto leader of the light, including his private lessons with Dumbledore, where he witnessed the memory of Voldemort applying for the defense position shortly before the war. Dumbledore's refusal had led to the curse on the defense position, which we hoped had been lifted for Snape's sake.

We had a good few weeks of normalcy while various aspects of the war effort were in a holding pattern. Strangely, Ron reported that he continued to feel hungry after his homunculus transformation. Checking with Hermione, she said the same. I'd made so many homunculi, I wasn't short of test subjects, so soon I'd made a significant discovery. Wizards fueled their magic off normal food, and continued to do so after becoming homunculi. Further, refraining from magic use slowed, but did not stop their hunger. If I ever did gain magic, it would mean needing to worry about starvation again.

Ron wasn't nearly as interested in the implications of this discovery on the road to zeroing in on the source and nature of magic itself. Instead, he was so worried about not being able to pass his apparition test that he was trying to convince me to share my alchemy equivalent. Ordinarily, I'd be fine with it, but I was worried if I did teach him this now, he'd never master actual apparition. Sadly, even with a lot of extra practice, Ron ended up failing his first apparition test by splinching off half an eyebrow. For coming so close, I gave him the details of my method. Upon hearing them, he promptly decided to stick with conventional apparition.

Charms was still the one class I couldn't do everything in as we approached exams. I took some heart in the fact that most of the sixth year NEWT students still couldn't do nonverbal spells, but he handful of charms that just couldn't be duplicated with alchemy continued to weigh on me. My mind was constantly on what I'd learned about food fueling magic, hoping that if I could crack the puzzle of how to give myself magic before exams, I could train up those spells and be okay.

I was still dwelling on that thought in Divination when Professor Trelawney issued me an ominous prediction. "You will achieve your goal, but only after losing that which is most precious to you." A quick glance at the patronus pin Sloth was still wearing and all worry about exams was driven from my mind by the reality that we were both intimately involved in a wizard war.

Even with multiple prophecies of doom hanging over her head, Sloth refused to be left behind when Dumbledore reported in that he had found what he believed to be the hiding place of the last horcrux. It was a sea cave in which Tom had tortured some children with magic before coming to Hogwarts. Given the unknown nature of the threats within, Harry agreed to an escort consisting of myself, Sloth, Dumbledore, Ron, and Hermione. He didn't want Ginny, Neville, or Luna endangered since they weren't of age yet, and thus hadn't been made homunculi. He pointed to the prophecy when they tried to protest the hypocrisy of him going.

The Sword of Gryffindor was strapped to Harry's side so the horcrux could be disposed of immediately. Then we were off, apparating with Dumbledore to the entrance to the cave. Each of us appeared on a different rock jutting out of the water. Dumbledore led us along the slippery rocks until we reached the bare cliff face.

Pointing down, Dumbledore directed us into the water. He and Harry put up bubble head charms while we homunculi just held our breath. Together, we spam through the ice and cold water. Wandlight helped us navigate the dark tunnel until we emerged into the otherwise pitch black cave beyond. Once out of the water, we dried off and began to examine our surroundings. It was a roundish cave with untooled blank walls.

"Yes, this is the place," said Dumbledore.

"How can you tell?" asked Harry.

"It has known magic," replied Dumbledore.

"How can you tell that?" asked Ron.

"Magic always leaves traces," said Dumbledore, falling into the role of teacher with ease, "sometimes very distinct traces. I taught Tom Riddle. I know his style."

"Do you mean you can sense the presence of magical energy or something?" I asked. "That wasn't on the curriculum."

"No, it isn't," said Dumbledore. "It is really more of a knack that develops with time and experience than something suited to a class room. Particularly a classroom in as magically saturated a location as Hogwarts."

He started running his fingertips along the wall until he found what he was looking for. He took a step back, pointed his wand, and the outline of a hidden door glowed brilliantly. He let the light die down and stared at the rock wall. "Oh, surely not. So crude," said Dumbledore when he completed his analysis.

"What is it, Professor?" asked Harry.

"I rather think that we are required to make payment to pass," said Dumbledore pulling a knife out of his robes.

Sloth closed a restraining hand around Dumbledore's wrist. "Do you really think it's a good idea ot leave Tom with a bit of our blood? He's used blood magic against us before."

"What do you recommend instead?" asked Dumbledore.

In reply, Sloth dragged Dumbledore through the wall right next to the door. I stepped through myself and Sloth ferried the others through the solid stone with her powers. The room we emerged into was utterly devoid of light save for a green glow further on. Wand light didn't reach as far as it should, suggesting the darkness was magical in origin.

The glow was coming from a small island in the middle of a glass smooth lake. Dumbledore began strolling around the edge of the lake, sensing and probing the area's magic.

"Professor," said Harry, "do you think the horcrux is here?"

"Oh yes," said Dumbledore confidently. "Yes, I'm sure it is. The question is, how do we get to it?"

"We couldn't just try a summoning charm?" suggested Harry.

"We certainly could," said Dumbledore stopping suddenly as though the thought hadn't occurred to him. "Why don't you do it?"

"Acio horcrux!" called Harry.

A human corpse leapt out of the lake between Harry and the green glow, interposing its body in the way of the spell and acting like an unliving shield charm. The water resumed its glassy smooth quality once it fell beneath the surface once again.

"An inferus," gasped Hermione.

"There's more of them under the water," reported Ron, aiming his wand light toward the water. "Oh my God, it's full of them."

"The protective spells used to improve their combat effectiveness let them block Harry's summoning charm," I said, considering.

"We're going to have to fight an army of inferi?" asked Harry, alarmed.

"This brings me back," I said, smiling nostalgically at Sloth. "Do you remember? Our first fight."

"How could I forget?" she said. "It was the first time I'd ever been so much as challenged, let alone foiled. I expect you to do a lot better against these ones."

"Wait, what?" asked Ron.

"I used to be the bad guy, remember?" said Sloth. "Greed and I met when I Was helping a serial killer use soul attachments on corpses to make something like inferi. He stopped me, and that started our rivalry."

"So, you've got experience fighting these things?" confirmed Harry.

"Harry, Snape assigned us an essay about fighting them this year," said Hermione, exasperated. "They're vulnerable to fire."

"Which Tom's thought of," I noted, "keeping them safe underwater until the moment to attack."

"Why haven't they attacked yet?" asked Harry.

"I believe they have been assigned to keep the horcrux in its resting place, and will not attack until we try to remove it," said Dumbledore. "Still, I would advise you not touch the water."

"You don't think the horcrux is at the bottom of the lake?" asked Harry.

"Oh, no," said Dumbledore as he resumed his stroll. "I think the horcrux is in the middle."

"So why are we walking around?" asked Sloth.

"Voldemort would have needed to create a means to cross the lake without attracting the wrath of those inferi he had placed within it in case he ever wanted to visit or remove his horcrux. Aha." Dumbledore stopped and groped in midair for something unseen.

Closing his hands around something invisible, he tapped it with his wand and caused it to glow green, revealing the outline of a chain. With another tap of his wand, he caused the chain to reel in, raising a small boat to the surface.

"It looks like it was meant for one person," said Harry. "It won't hold all of us."

"Voldemort will not have cared about the weight, but about the amount of magical power that crossed his lake. I rather think an enchantment will have been placed upon this boat so that only one wizard at a time will be able to sail in it. I do not think you will count, Harry. You are underage and unqualified."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "We don't need the boat." I stomped my foot and a wave of blue alchemic light passed over the lake, freezing it into a single block of ice. "Inferi are strong, but even they won't be able to move when fully encased in thick ice. Plus, now we can all just walk to the island."

I was right. Beneath the ice, the inferi were making an effort to move as we walked across, but the ice held them fast. At the center of the lake, an elevated basin contained a glowing green potion. Dumbledore held his hand over it, then drew his wand and cast a number of spells before reporting his findings.

"This potion cannot be penetrated by hand, vanished, parted, scooped up, or siphoned away, nor can it be transfigured, charmed, or otherwise made to change its nature. I can only conclude that this potion is supposed to be drunk." He conjured a crystal goblet.

"What? No!" said Harry, and both Sloth and I grabbed Dumbledore to restrain him this time.

"Only by drinking it can I empty the basin and see what lies in its depths," argued Dumbledore. "The horcrux will be at the bottom."

"We should prepare a poison cure," suggested Hermione, casting the spell to analyze the ingredients of the potion.

"How could you drink it if you can't scoop it out to begin with?" asked Ron.

I reached out and verified that my hand was stopped before touching the surface. Taking the goblet Dumbledore had conjured, I successfully scooped up some. When I poured it out on the ground, however, a refilling charm on the basin triggered, topping it back off.

"Do you see?" asked Dumbledore.

"There are a few more things we can try while Hermione works on that antidote," I said, scooping another goblet full out of the basin. When I set the goblet down on the floor, the basin again refilled itself. "It only happens when we put it down," I noted.

"Tom knew his boat would only carry one person," said Harry. "We need more goblets. Two for everyone."

Dumbledore complied and conjured the cups, which were distributed between us. At Harry's direction, we each filled both goblets and held them without drinking. That successfully emptied the basin, revealing a gold locket at the bottom. I grew a third hand and took one of the goblets from Harry, allowing him to draw the Sword of Gryffindor and stab the locket.

It didn't blacken or writhe like the other horcurxes did. Instead, it snapped in two easily like normal gold, revealing a bit of folded parchment inside. Harry bent down and retrieved it, then read aloud.

"To the Dark Lord. I know I will be dead long before you read this, but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once again. R.A.B."

"Regulus Black was never trusted with Slytherin's locket," said Sloth. "He penetrated these defenses to steal it, but he couldn't find a way to destroy it before he died. That explains why Tom didn't come and remove it from the Black house after he died."

"I think we have someone new to bring back with the Resurrection Stone," I said.

Harry repaired the locket with his wand and put the note back inside. Replacing it at the bottom of the basin, he said, "Regulus wanted Tom to find that when he came to check on the horcrux. I think we should honor that wish."

We poured the potion back into the basin and Dumbledore vanished the glasses. After that, we exited the cave and returned to Hogwarts.

* * *

We were studying for exams when Snape came to talk to Harry. After verifying we were alone, he reported in on the latest orders he'd received from Voldemort.

"How he's accepted Draco Malfoy has given up his half hearted attempts to kill Dumbledore, the Dark Lord has assigned me to both finish the job and kill Draco for his disobedience."

"I guess that's it for your time as a spy," said Ron.

"Not necessarily," said Harry to general looks of confusion. "I mean, you're free to come in and be on our side openly any time, but if you still wanted to keep his trust-"

"Potter, get to the point," interrupted Snape.

"We could fake their deaths," said Harry. "The only ones who know about the Unbreakable Vow are on our side, so me not dropping dead won't tip him off."

"How would we fake their deaths?" asked Neville.

"We just make some fake bodies for the funerals and put them on a polyjuice regimen until the danger's past. It's standard procedure in the Ministry," said Luna.

"No it isn't," said Hermione, "but it would work."

"We'd have to get them to go along with it," said Ginny.

"On hte plus side, with all the muggle family members in the school for protection, they can blend in with the crowd," said Sloth.

"Let me know when you need the bodies," I said, "and give me a cause of death."

"With Dumbledore seemingly out of the way," considered Snape, "the Dark Lord might be lured out into more overt action, exposing both him and the snake. And, at a critical moment, Dumbledore could still step in."

Both Dumbledore and Draco agreed to the plan. Snape provided two very obvious poisons I was to mimic the effects and traces in the fake corpses. That way, whoever Voldemort sent to the funerals would be able to verify the cause of death. Unfortunately, as Snape pointed out, if he weren't caught and driven out of the school, the next order would be to kill Harry. We carefully coordinated a scene with the Order of the Phoenix. Snape would be driven from the school in a carefully choreographed three on one duel with McGonagall, Moody, and Tonks. Everyone not in the Order, plus Hagrid, had to be kept in the dark for this to succeed.

The spectacle was staged during exams, with a dead Draco being removed from his dorm. McGonagall "discovered" Dumbledore in a similar position when she went to his office to report Draco. She confronted Snape with Moody and Tonks at her sides, and Snape admitted the deed and fought, with Snape being forced to flee.

It was one more distraction for my exams that I really didn't need, but the time turner enabled study time minimized the impact. McGonagall took over as headmistress. Slughorn was made head of Slytherin, and she brought in James to replace her as transfiguration professor and head of Gryffindor. Sirius was brought back to teach defense properly this time as an open member of the faculty. Lupin's work with the werewolves for the Order was still too important to bring him on as staff despite the excellent job he'd done his one year here.

Dumbledore's funeral was held shortly after exams, and a tomb was erected on the grounds for him. Dumbledore himself seemed touched at the turnout. McGonagall took the opportunity at the funeral to extend an offer to all students to remain under the protection of Hogwarts over the summer, given the dangerous times. Even with the recent apparent deaths, most people realized there was still no safer place to be than Hogwarts.

* * *

With the end of the term, it was time to start setting plans in motion. Harry returned to the Dursleys' under an Order escort to renew the blood wards one last time and to prepare his family to be moved to Hogwarts when the blood wards fell with Harry coming of age. Sloth and I returned to Privet Drive with him so we could clear out the red stones and Philosopher's Flowers from our house on the off chance the Death Eaters searched it.

Ron was entrusted with the Resurrection Stone and assigned to bring back as many people on our side as he could manage, including Regulus Black if he could find an appropriate loved one. He was also to convert anyone on our side so inclined into homunculi once they were of age.

Dumbledore had been reassigned to be Draco Malfoy's body guard, since they were both supposed to be dead. Because there was no easy way to let Draco continue his NEWT classes without raising suspicions, Dumbledore agreed to serve as a private tutor for him next year. Narcissa's worries about Lucius proved justified when news came down that he'd been killed during a mass Death Eater breakout from Azkaban.

"Until Harry gives us a lead on the last horcrux, we need to help keep up the momentum of the war effort," I said as I deconstructed the armored servants that had been manufacturing red stones at Privet Drive all year.

"There's still plenty to do that doesn't directly involve stripping Tom of his immortality," agreed Sloth, while she was breaking down the remaining philosopher's flowers.

"Obviously, we need to take any chance we can get to kill the snake," I continued. "We also need to take out his Death Eaters and, if possible, disrupt their muggle attacks."

"Don't forget, anyone they use could be under the Imperius curse, so we should avoid lethal tactics if possible," reminded Sloth. "Now that they're acting openly, they'll probably gather a lot of canon fodder that way."

"Still, we can't just let them go either way," I said. "We'll need to take prisoners and sort out who's who. Executing the real Death Eaters will free those they Imperiused."

"Filch'll be happy," said Sloth. "He really wanted to get use out of those chains."

"Speaking of Filch," I said, picking up a red stone, "I think we need to arm the muggles in Hogwarts in case the defenses are breached."

"Guns won't work in the castle," noted Sloth.

"Not normal ones," I agreed. "Remember those fake wands with switches I was using in third year? We could make red stone powered guns using the same principle that fire stunning bolts instead of bullets."

"I like it," said Sloth. "We've got more than enough red stones for it."

"Do you think Scrimgeour'll be able to keep things from falling apart outside the castle?" I asked.

"I doubt it," replied Sloth. "The Ministry hasn't been able to stop a single muggle attack, witches and wizards have been disappearing all year, and the dementors are breeding. I think it will end up being up to us."

"At least when we were fighting the Nazis, we could rely on the allies to fight the war while we focused on the super weapon projects. Do you think we should involve the muggle minister?"

"Apparently the Order has Kingsley Shacklebolt keeping him informed and protected. Presumably anything he can do is limited with the efforts the wizards routinely take to keep the muggles out of their affairs. A strike team of soldiers won't do much good even with our new guns if they're all turned away by muggle repelling charms."

"It'd be the same problem calling for help from back home, wouldn't it? Even if the Amestrian military wanted to get involved in an interdimensional war against forces they have no knowledge or experience with, most of the really effective alchemists won't agree to become homunculi to bypass the muggle repelling charms."

"It's a good thing we can be in two places at once," said Sloth. "I get the feeling that when things do heat up, we'll need to get everything done all at once just to keep up."

* * *

Author's comments:  
With Dumbledore no longer in charge, his lucky breaks will no longer dominate the heroes side, forcing them to rely on their own skills, abilities, and general competence. Fortunately, under Harry the entire process is being better run and better organized with the light side sharing information with one another and actively working together toward their actual goals.


	44. Chapter 59: The Importance of Family

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 59) The Importance of Family  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Our packing was done in short order. With all our seeds and stones in my shoulder bag, Sloth and I went next door to see how things were coming with the Dursleys. Unsurprisingly, Vernon was being obstructionist.

"Why can't the Ministry protect us from this voldywhatsit?" he was demanding of Harry.

"I told you," replied Harry. "The Ministry of Magic's been infiltrated backward and forward by his followers."

"Not your Ministry," clarified Vernon, "the real Ministry."

"The Muggle Ministry?" demanded Harry, incredulously. "You can't be serious. The only reason the muggle minister hasn't been put under the Imperius curse is Kingsley acting as a bodyguard."

"I take it you aren't finished packing yet," I said, drawing attention to my presence.

"Actually, I've just finished packing everything," said Lily cheerfully as she floated a number of trunks and suitcases down the stairs to pile them near the front door.

"You're sure we'll be safe at Hogwarts?" Petunia asked her sister.

"At the moment, it's the safest place in the world for you and your family," said Lily.

"I thought we still had until the boy turned seventeen," complained Vernon.

"It's between waiting out the next month or so and leaving at the last moment when the Death Eaters will be waiting or leaving early and not giving them warning when," said Sloth. She hadn't bothered shifting out of her four year old form. The time for placating people with comforting illusions was over.

"Everything's ready? Excellent," said James as he swept into the room carrying a bundle of clothes. "Now, while we wait for Moody to get here, everyone should put on your hats and cloaks."

The Dursleys all just stared contemptuously at the cloaks and pointed wizard hats James was holding out to them. James looked between the clothes and the Dursleys with confusion as the rest of us put them on.

"You can't seriously expect us to go out wearing those," said Vernon.

"They've got protective enchantments laid on them," said James. "I knew you couldn't cast shield charms and I figured you'd be safer wearing these while we travel."

"The clasp on the cloak protects against dementors," I added, drawing attention to the round pin engraved with an alchemic seal that I'd provided in bulk to Fred and George for just this use. Dudley took the offered clothes and put them on then and there. He was the only one who'd directly experienced the dark creatures and knew full well the danger they represented.

A knock came at the door and Mad-Eye Moody limped in. His magical eye rotated around in his socket, pausing in its rotation to note at least three separate targets outside. Verifying his identity was unnecessary, as the blood wards wouldn't allow a polyjuiced Death Eater inside.

"It's like we thought," said Moody. "Three Death Eaters outside at least. Antiapparition jinx around the whole area to keep us just taking you side along. Floo network's not trustworthy even if we could get this place temporarily hooked in. With the trace still on Harry, making a portkey'll send up alarms at the Ministry."

"We can take three Death Eaters," I said.

"All three before they can touch their marks?" asked Moody rhetorically. "Invisibility cloaks work best when the enemy isn't expecting them. They'll be using human presence revealing spells."

"How many humans are in this house?" asked Sloth showing off her slitted, violet eyes.

"Three's just the ones I can see," said Moody. "They know I've got this eye and what it can do. If they've got someone transfigured nearby watching, taking out those three won't help."

"What's the plan?" asked James.

"The Order's set up some safe houses. Each one has a portkey to Hogwarts in it," said Moody.

"But aren't those a security risk?" I asked. "If the Death Eaters capture one, they can get inside the protections."

"They're timed and single use," said Moody. "And we've got them keyed to land you in a locked cell in the dungeons with most of the Order waiting to verify whoever arrives."

"How're we getting to the safe houses?" asked Lily.

"We'll fly," he said, taking a number of broomsticks out of a bag like mine. "We'll split into three groups. Each group will have one Potter and one dursley in it riding together and the third member flying guard duty. Each group heads for a different safe house to confuse and throw off any pursuers."

Moody spread a map out on the kitchen table and went over the locations of the dozen safe houses that had been prepared. Each group was assigned a primary, secondary, and tertiary safe house to go to, and three of the safe houses were left unassigned as decoys. The destination of each group was selected randomly, then and there, to prevent any spy from having foreknowledge they could use to concentrate their forces along our route.

"I'd still feel better if we took out the Death Eaters we can see before we set out," I said. "Can you tell if htey've all go the mark?"

Moody swiveled his eye and nodded.

"Then they're real Death Eaters and not Imperiused lackeys," I said.

"We could bypass all this using the Gate," said Sloth. "Antiapparition jinxes don't work on that."

"Do you want to try draging Vernon through?" I asked. "He's going to be enough of a pain just getting on a broomstick, let alone rocketing past the grasping limbs of the Gate Children."

"Good point," said Sloth. "So, you me, and one of Harry's parents slip under invisibility cloaks, take out the Death Eaters, and get back."

"We use these," I said, setting three soul coins on the table. "They'll still be alive and present according to any human presence revealing spells that way. Don't forget to prop your Death Eater up after you strike in case there are transfigured Death Eaters out there."

James took a coin and nodded. When we stepped out under our cloaks, Lily and Dudley had just managed to talk Petunia into putting on the hat and cloak. Vernon was still being stubborn. It seemed he really would rather die than be seen dressed like that.

After I extracted the Death Eater's soul, I locked his joints with a transmutation emulating a full body bind curse. Then I crept back. James and Sloth reported similar success and handed me back the coins. I stowed all three in my bag.

Moody nodded and said, "I think that's all we can do. We should go before they miss a check in."

"Wait, how're we supposed to bring our luggage on... on..." sputtered Vernon, pointing at the broomsticks but unable to bring himself to say t he word.

"Magic," replied James, who raised his wand and levitated all the luggage into Moody's bag.

"Any more objections, Dursley?" asked Moody menacingly.

"You really expect us to just leave our house?" blustered Vernon.

"We can't very well put it in a bag and take it with us," noted James. "It's not really built for being picked up."

"How do I know you're telling the truth about this voldything to begin with?" demanded Vernon.

"We're on a schedule, Dursley," said Moody. "We exposed Potter just to give you time to prepare."

"Well, I'm not leaving," declared Vernon, crossing his arms.

Without warning, Dudley punched Vernon in the face. Vernon collapsed unconscious. A one punch knock out from his boxer son. Dudley put the hat and cloak on his unconscious father and lifted him on his shoulder.

"Duddykins," gasped Petunia, "what did you do?"

"Dad isn't safe here," said Dudley. "We have to bring him with us."

Moody nodded approvingly and said, "All right, everyone outside and on your brooms."

Dudley draped his father over James' broomstick then mounted in front of Harry on his. Moody climbed onto his broom next to Lily's and I prepared myself to escort Harry. When we kicked off the ground, a tree reached around to press a leaf covered twig to one of its branches and twenty Death Eaters materialized in the sky above us.

I was pointing my wand to blast a hole through their ranks when a yellow light from the ground below made me stop. A Death Eater with a silver hand was holding a massive flamel array active directly below us. Four brooms fell to earth as James, Lily, Sloth,a nd I lost control and began vomiting up red stones. With Petigrew's alchemy incapacitating most of the escort, Voldemort himself arrived on the scene.

Without the aid of a broom, Voldemort took to the sky, flying at Harry. Weighed down by his cousin, Harry couldn't out fly Voldemort. Voldemort raised his wand to end it, but Harry was quicker. Wrenching his arm around at an odd angle, he sent a jet of golden flame at the Dark Lord, causing his wand to shatter into splinters.

Taking advantage of Voldemort's distraction, Moody wheeled around in midair and shot a hex downward, decapitating Petigrew and releasing us to act. Killing curses rained down at us from the Death Eaters above. Lily threw herself over her sister and James shielded the unconscious Vernon. No time for alchemy, I threw myself over Sloth. James, Lily, Moody, and I were all struck by the green bolts of death.

I was conscious seconds later as Sloth shoved the red stone at the tip of her wand down my throat. Voldemort had retrieved a new wand and was taking aim at Harry. I caught sight of a glint of gold chain strung between Harry and Dudley, the turn of an hourglass, and they disappeared.

Sloth and I followed Harry's lead. Springing to our feet, I used the arrays on my shoes to transmute a protective tunnel out of the pavement. Large holes were blasted in the tunnel by the Death Eaters as Sloth reached James and Vernon and I reached Lily and Petunia. We wrapped the silver chain of our pocket watches around ourselves and our charges and disappeared into the past.

"We have to go back!" said Harry. "We're in the past! Moody's still alive!"

"We can't change what's happened," said Sloth. "You know that."

"Use a soul coin and an invisibility cloak," said Harry. "Grab his soul just before the killing curse hits him!"

"Approach Mad-Eye under an invisibility cloak, in midair, in the middle of an aerial battle with killing curses flying every which way?" I argued back. "We're better off getting to Hogwarts and reviving him with the Resurrection Stone."

Harry blinked, then nodded. "All right. Let's go."

"They're dead!" screamed Petunia. "They were really trying to kill us! Vernon! Was he hit? I thought you said these hats would protect us!" She hurled her hat angrily to the ground and rushed over to where Vernon laid, unconscious. "He's still breathing. Thank God."

"Thank James," I said, pulling handfuls of red stones out of my bag to revive James and Lily with. "He shielded Vernon with his body just like Lily did for you."

Once everyone was revived, we mounted our broomsticks and headed for the nearest of the safe houses Moody had informed us about. The time turners had deposited us some distance away from Privet Drive, and with our past selves still there, none of the Death Eaters would be looking for us yet.

While we waited at the safe house for the portkey to activate, Harry sat in a chair and closed his eyes. Vernon regained consciousness and Petunia placated him while the rest of us gathered around Harry. Voldemort was agitated enough during the battle that his thoughts were involuntarily spilling over into Harry's mind.

"He borrowed a wand to avoid another prior incantum happening with the twin cores," said Harry. "He doesn't know what my wand did either. That's probably going to be important. Moody just killed Petigrew. Tom's livid about it. Seems like Wormtail kept what he knew about alchemy to himself to make sure he didn't outlive his usefulness. We've just escaped, and now he's madder than ever. He knows we used time turners to do it."

"What do you mean 'what your wand did'?" I asked. "What did it do?"

"It pulled my arm around and shot out some sort of golden fire that destroyed the wand he borrowed."

"Nothing like that's happened before?" asked James. When Harry shook his head, James said, "If Ollivander hadn't gone missing, we could ask him what's going on."

Dudley warned us that the time for us to catch our portkey was approaching. We all gathered around to make the last leg of our trip. It took only a minimum of strong arming to get Vernon to comply.

In the Hogwarts dungeon, while we were being observed for signs of the Imperius curse and waiting out the time for polyjuice to wear off, I gave a full report of the incident to the Order members holding us. Ron was summoned once we reported Mad-Eye's death. He brought Hermione, Luna, Ginny, and Neville so we could avoid giving explanations more than once.

"Of course it was Mad-Eye!" ranted Ron as he arrived. "If it'd been literally anyone else who was there, I could toss the Resurrection Stone into your cell and they'd be back on their feet before you were done with quarantine."

"We have to have someone we can use to bring him back," I said, dumbfounded.

"Alistor was a solitary man," said McGonagall. "He didn't form deep attachments easily, and as far as I'm aware, his loved ones all preceded him into the next life."

"So, we have to get the wand instead," said Sloth. "It was a killing curse that did it."

"We can't," said Harry. "Tom's on to us bringing people back with captured wands. He had the wand that killed Moody destroyed first thing after the battle."

"The Resurrection Stone can't bring him back without loved ones, and the wand's been broken. I think it's time you played your trump card, Greed," said Ron.

"My trump card?" I asked, confused.

"You told me you could bring back the dead with a Philosopher's Stone."

"I also told you the cost of forging one," I shot back. "That isn't an option. Moody certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that."

"That's not what I'm talking about," said Ron. "You never destroyed the Philosopher's Stones from our first year. You ate them, but you've got an array for accessing their power inside a homunculus."

My eyes were downcast as I said, "Petigrew used a flamel array on us at the start of the fight. We puked up all the stones that were in us and they melted away."

"You don't have them anymore? Either of them?" asked Ron, wide eyed.

"He might still come back as a ghost," suggested Hermione. "He knew we could put him back in a body."

Harry shook his head. "Everyone he loved is already gone. He died a hero saving our lives and finishing off Petigrew. He won't choose to come back."

Putting his arms around his son, James kissed the top of Harry's head and said, "Even if we could've gotten the wand, we'd only be calling him back to help us out of obligation. He'll be happy where he's gone, back with the people he loves and no regrets about how he went out."

"Is that what I did to you?" asked Harry in a small voice. "You both died saving me and I called you back."

"We chose to come back to you," said Lily firmly. "Greed gave us the choice to be put in these bodies or to have our blood seals broken and pass on again. There are people we love who are still here, and being with them isn't an obligation."

* * *

A few hours later, after we were let out of the dungeon, Harry got another vision from Voldemort. Ollivander was imprisoned somewhere and Voldemort was torturing him for information about the behavior of Harry's wand. Apparently, Ollivander had explained about the twin cores in a previous torture session, and Voldemort suspected him of holding out.

We all remembered the vision of Sirius Voldemort had falsified to lure us into a trap, so we decided to verify Harry's vision with Snape. If it was true, hopefully he could also give us more details on where Ollivander was being held. Harry'd only seen the cell itself in his vision.

Snape was on an irregular check in pattern due to the deep cover nature of his work. He had a communication mirror, but the risk of another Death Eater being in the room when we tried to contact him meant everyone was safer if we let him call us. It meant Ollivander had to wait longer, but if he was in immediate danger of being killed, there wouldn't be much we could do anyway.

While we waited, we busied ourselves securing the castle. Hermione put unbreakable charms on every window. I applied the same alchemy I'd used to protect the Philosopher's Stones to the outer walls of the castle, leaving the interior walls alchemically malleable. Sloth produced the red stone powered stun pistols we'd discussed and distributed them to the muggles. Ron put refilling charms on our red water tanks so we wouldn't be dependent on outside ingredients for our red stones. Ginny recruited Peeves to help set up some very nasty, very noisy booby traps in all the secret passages in and out of the castle. Neville and Luna put their heads together with Hagrid to work out the logistics of comfortably housing all the creatures in the forbidden forest.

The teachers were similarly busy. Flitwick was placing undetectable extension charms on the castle's rooms to accommodate the larger than usual number of residents, and to account for potentially many more refugees. McGonagall helped Sprout relocate the contents of her greenhouses indoors. Slughorn was hard at work brewing us supplies of veritasyrum, polyjuice, felix felicis, and other useful potions for the war effort.

Harry spent a lot of time in the Chamber of Secrets consulting with Slytherin's basilisk. It wasn't long before we began to suspect this was less about castle security and more about avoiding the Dursleys. Most of the muggle relatives already staying in the castle had tried to welcome them and make them feel comfortable at first, but soon the Dursleys' attitude had managed to alienate nearly everybody. Dudley had escaped this general attitude by largely abandoning his parents and spending much of his time telling stories about the abusive home life Harry'd had before coming to Hogwarts. Before the first week was out, everyone knew he was the cousin of Harry Potter, the leader of the light, and everyone's best hope against Voldemort. He was a natural at navigating power structures and had exploited his connection to Harry for all it was worth.

Finally, Snape contacted us. He was able to confirm Ollivander was being held in Malfoy manner, which Voldemort was using as a headquarters. He also brought news regarding the mass breakout from Azkaban orchestrated by the Death Eaters. Snape had been ordered to kill Lucius Malfoy during the breakout. Instead, he'd used the modified soul coin I'd given him. Lucius was alive with his soul attached to the coin. A dead drop was arranged and Lucius' soul was transported safely to Hogwarts. A dozen new soul coins left for Snape in case he was called upon to commit more murders.

"I'm not making him a homunculus," said Ron firmly when we had the coin.

"We still need Draco's cooperation to keep Harry alive," said Hermione.

"Harry needs to die anyway," snarled Ron viciously. "I say we break the blood seal and send the other two off to their fate. We know Harry'll come back from one death."

"I think he'd probably rather save it until after the other horcruxes are gone," said Hermione.

"Lucius Malfoy tried to kill my sister with that diary!" shouted Ron.

"I'm with Ron," said Ginny. "With everything he did, he sholdn't be rewarded by making him immortal."

"There is middle ground," I said. "We could bind him to a suit of armor instead. I think never being able to feel the warmth of his family's touch ever again is pretty bad all on its own."

"I think tha's probably our best choice," said Harry. "Can you make the armor distinctive so we can tell him appart from the others?"

"Can do," I said, nodding.

"That settled," said Neville, "who are we sending to Malfoy manner to rescue Mr. Ollivander?"

"I've been thinking about this," said Harry. "I want to send Dobby. He knows Malfoy manner, and house elves can apparate through areas that don't let wizard apparition through."

"We can't send him alone," said Luna. "It's too dangerous."

"Not to mention someone'll have to be on hand to remind him not to punish himself for breaking the Malfoys' good dishes while he's there," said Ron.

"I'm good at infiltrating," offered Sloth. "Between me and Dobby, we can be in and out before anyone knows we're gone. And if it does go sideways, I can protect them both in a fight."

Harry nodded. "Take an extra wand to arm Ollivander with once you're there. Is your invisibility cloak still in good shape?"

"It's fine," said Sloth.

"Make sure you don't die," said Ron. "You still need to come to Bill and Fleur's wedding."

"Speaking of which, do you have details?" I asked.

"They're having it at the Burrow," began Ron. "Tons of security charms've been put up. It's the day after Harry's birthday, but mum wants us all there as soon as we can to help with the preparations. We'd already be heading out if it weren't for needing to rescue Ollivander."

* * *

After waiting out his polyjuice observation time, Ollivander was debriefed under veritasyrum. Between that and Harry's legilimency, we were as confident as we could be that he hadn't actually joined Voldemort's cause. He genuinely had no answers about what Harry's wand had done, as the independent attack was unprecedented. After having been unable to explain it to Voldemort, he'd next been forced to answer questions about the Elder Wand. Voldemort had apparently decided it represented a solution to the problem of Harry's wand.

Ollivander had been able to trace the Elder Wand as far as the wandmaker Gregorovitch, so Voldemort didn't yet know it had been in the hands of Grindewald, and then Dumbledore. Grevorovitch was currently retired and his whereabouts unknown. If Voldemort was intent on tracing the Elder Wand, that meant we could lay traps along his path. Dumbledore's tomb could have a portkey in the form of a fake wand with a destination inside an apparition proof prison cell lined with murder hles we coul safely shoot curses into. Grindewald's prison cell in Nurmengard could be staked out with dissilusioned agents. If we could find Gregorovitch before Voldemort, a similar trap could be laid.

Our best hope for finding Grevorovitch was actually to attend Bill and Fleur's wedding. Fleur had invited Viktor Krum, who had been one of Gregorovitch's last customers before he retired. As such, with no further delays, we took a portkey to the Burrow.

Plenty of chores were waiting for us as we set about getting the Burrow cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Given how overcrowded the house was going to be with all the wedding guests, the six of us who weren't family insisted on sleeping in the tent from our stay at the Quidditch world cup, set up in the yard. Given how long we'd be staying, we brought our pets from Hogwarts along. Loki and Crookshanks fortunately got along well enough, so both stayed in the tent with us.

Everyone had to be careful doing magic around Harry, since the trace was still on him and Voldemort's ministry spies could use it to identify his location. Fortunately, he would be of age and free of the trace in time for the wedding itself. We did take full advantage of the fact that alchemy wasn't detectable by the trace to help us with the list of chores. Somehow, this prompted Mrs. Weasley to raise her standards of preparation and invent new chores that absolutely must be completed.

The overgrown garden had been regrown to Mrs. Weasley's specifications. The dirt, dust, and detritus had been cleaned form every corner of the house and yard. Every room had been redecorated and prepared for guests. Everyone's clothes had been mended and refitted. The chickens were bathed and groomed.

As was usual at the crowded Weasley house, privacy was at a minimum. Sloth and I weren't the only ones frustrated at the difficulty of stealing a few private moments here and there. Both Harry and Ginny as well as Ron and Hermione kept trying to sneak off and being thwarted by the cramped quarters and Mrs. Weasley's watchful eye. Neville and Luna had tried dating briefly after the Yule Ball, but things never really developed between them, with them deciding they were better as friends.

Order members stopped by the Burrow frequently to report in and socialize. Attempts had been made to recover Moody's body, but the Death Eaters had cleaned up the scene before they left. I'd lost people before, but Moody was different. Maybe because I wasn't close to him, maybe because of all the verified evidence of an afterlife, his death seemed less tragic. I just hoped this wasn't a trend. In the back of my mind was still the niggling worry that with enough time, I'd end up like Dante and Hohenheim.

* * *

Harry's birthday was a joyous occasion. Now seventeen and free of the trace, Harry amused himself with small, frivolous acts of magic. Friends, family, and well wishers arrived to join in the celebration, though the security on the Burrow meant the guest list was still quite intimate. Since any potential weapon or tool I was able to lay my hands on was going to be given to Harry as part of the war effort anyway, I decided to give him a key that would allow him access to the living quarters in the Chamber of Secrets that Sloth and I had included in our lab. The two of us could find other opportunities for privacy once we were back in the castle.

Harry's other gifts included a mokeskin pouch from Hagrid that could only be opened by its owner, some new dark detectors, a sampler of all Fred and George's merchandise, and a gold watch that had been in the Weasley family. Sloth had painted Harry a portrait using the potion infused pigments that brought their subjects to life. Not really wanting to create another person with her art, Sloth's portrait was of a boa like the one Harry told us about having met at the zoo years ago. The snake had several canvases, so Harry could dispatch the snake to monitor different locations of his choosing.

"Armstrong would be proud," I said, staring in awe at the photo realistic painting as the snake slithered between canvases.

"I've been trying to learn how to do it since my first day at Hogwarts," admitted Sloth, blushing. "Making the pigments was a lot easier than being a good enough artist for them to actually come to life."

"I love it, Sloth. Thank you," said Harry enthusiastically.

"A copy would fit in really well with the decor at Grimauld Place," said Sirius. "Now that Regulus is back, he's started complaining about us redecorating, and that would be a portrait we could both agree on."

"How's Regulus adapting to his new body?" asked Harry.

"He's mostly still in shock that he's come back from the dead," said Sirius. "He's looking forward to rubbing that in Tom's face. He wanted me to ask you to let him go on the mission to kill the snake once we know where it is."

"He's more than earned the right to destroy a horcrux," said Harry.

"Speaking of which," said Lupin, "any leads on the last one?"

Harry shook his head. "All I really have to go on was Dumbledore's guess that with Hufflepuff's cup and Slytherin's locket, Tom would've wanted to complete the set with something of Ravenclaw's or Gryffindor's. That is just a guess, though."

"If course, he was prone to lucky guesses," said Neville, wryly.

"As to the where," said Harry, returning the grin, "he left two with his followers, and two in places related to his past. I think the last one must be someplace else from his past he considered important."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Since the Resurrection Stone runs on the power of love, not having loved ones is an objective, quantifiable weakness. The power of love can still help decide the war, even if the sacrificial protection plan Dumbledore had running got spoiled.


	45. Chapter 60: Strike and Counterstrike

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 60) Strike and Counterstrike  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

The wedding the next day began with all manner of relatives arriving. Most of the Weasley relatives were decent, pleasant people. The main exception being Ron's ill tempered, hundred year old Aunt Muriel. Avoiding her became a priority as soon as she arrived. Fleur's family were also wonderful people, who were happy and excited about the union of their two families.

Even with my occlumency blocking the charms of the various part veela relatives, it was impossible not to find myself frequently entranced by their mundane beauty and cheerful disposition. Now that we were in our true forms, Sloth had little trouble regaining my attention at will, which left her feeling far less insecure around them than she otherwise might have. The two of us wore the same clothes we had during the Yule Ball, adjusted in size to our true forms.

Viktor Krum arrived in time to be seated, but we'd have to wait until after the ceremony to discuss Grevorovitch. Sloth and I took seats near the front and intertwined our fingers. We'd agreed our own wedding would take place after Voldemort was permanently disposed of, and we couldn't help but consider which elements from this ceremony we would like in our own.

Finally, with Bill waiting up by the priest, Fleur came down the isle in a simple white dress and a silver tiara. Her father walked with her, arm in arm, until they reached the front where he took his seat. I felt Sloth's fingers twitch, and I could guess what it was about. That was one element we couldn't have in our wedding.

At the direction of the priest, Bill and Fleur pledged their lifelong devotion to one another. When the vows were sealed, not with magic bearing threats and consequences, but with freely given words of love and the support of all gathered, the priest bid us rise. The chairs were levitated off to the sides, and a dance floor was conjured under our feet.

So as not to lose the entire evening, Sloth and I limited ourselves to only dance every other song. Congratulations were offered to the bride and groom after our first dance. After the second, we went to talk to Viktor.

"Greed, it is good to see you," said Viktor warmly. "And who is this?"

"You met Sloth the last time you were in Brattain," I reminded him.

Looking at Sloth carefully, there was a glimmer of recognition in his eyes, and he asked, "Was there an accident with a shrinking solution?"

"No," said Sloth. "This is what I've always looked like. I was making myself look older to fit in."

"I see," said Krum. "In that case, I am honored that you now feel safe showing the real you." He kissed the back of Sloth's hand.

"You don't know how much your acceptance means to both of us," I said, squeezing Sloth's shoulder.

"We wanted to ask you about your wand," said Sloth, changing the subject.

"Ah," said Krum. "Harry already told me you were looking for Gregorovitch. As I told him, I have not seen him since I purchased my wand. I will be happy to ask after him when I return to my home country for you."

"Did Harry give you-" I started.

"Yes," said Krum, cutting me off, holding up a communication mirror. "It is a very clever enchantment. I will let you know as soon as I find out anything."

"He did tell you Tom Riddle is also looking for Gregorovitch, right?" confirmed Sloth.

"He did," said Krum, nodding. "Karkaroff's old master will not find Grevorovitch first if I have anything to say about it."

"Don't hesitate to use the mirror to call for help if you need it," I said. "We've got a lot of people Tom's hurt on our side anxious to do whatever they can to beat him and end this once and for all."

Viktor lowered his voice, then asked, "Have you had any luck finding his horcrux?"

"Yes and no," I said. "We destroyed four. We're pretty sure we know what a fifth one is and how to get at it. The sixth, we haven't been able to identify yet."

"More than one?" Viktor asked, his jaw dropping. "You have to damage your soul to make just one. Who would even think of making more than one?"

"A half blood raised by muggles without any of the usual taboos or cautionary tales," said Sloth.

"Missing out on taboos is a great way to push the bounds of what's possible," I said. "It'd be an admirable trait if it were channeled into something less evil."

"Dark lords always do things we would admire if they weren't killing and torturing innocent people," said Krum. "If they didn't do anything new and impressive, no one would follow them."

"You'd think I'd be over it after six years opposing one," said Sloth, "but dark lords being a thing is still such a strange thing."

"Count yourselves lucky you come from a land without them," said Viktor.

On that note, Sloth and I returned to the dance floor. No one but Aunt Muriel was giving Sloth and I disapproving looks after getting a few words of explanation. We were accepted and happily so. Viktor's reaction being close to the standard. Witches and wizards were used to people of all shapes and sizes.

Suddenly, the magic of the evening was broken by the arrival of Rufus Scrimgeour and a half dozen Aurors, including Order member Kingsley Shacklebolt. They all looked scuffed and singed, with one of the Aurors stunned unconscious and supported by his fellows. The fact that they had apparated into the middle of the dance floor meant the security enchantments around the Burrow had failed.

"The Death Eaters are staging a coup in the Ministry," said Scrimgeour. "I barely made it out alive with the help of a handful of Aurors they hadn't gotten to yet. They're coming. We need to get everyone out of here before they arrive."

There were screams of panic as people began apparating out. Scrimgeour and his Aurors tried to get everyone to vacate in an organized fashion, but before any progress could be made, masked Death Eaters appeared on the scene. Scrimgeour had come here because he knew that's where Harry would be. The Death Eaters had obviously come for the same reason.

Sloth and I nodded to one another, and I whistled for Loki. The Aurors and Order members in attendance raised protective spells to guard the fleeing guests. Loki transformed in a burst of red and blue light and leapt at the nearest Death Eater, pinning him to the ground with his massive weight while throwing a second Death Eater twenty feet to land unconscious from the impact of Loki's club like tail. Loki wasn't really designed for nonlethal take downs, but he was performing admirably.

Sloth ran through the crowded areas where the Death Eaters were mixed in with panicking party guests. She passed harmlessly through the civilians, punching the Death Eaters in their stomachs or crotches hard enough to lift them off their feet, and breaking kneecaps with impunity. If those were imperiused agents, broken bones were easily fixed.

I stomped my foot and raised a temporary stone barrier between the crowd and most of the Death Eaters, then I pointed my wand above the barrier and turned the plants in the garden into snakes, each bearing a paralyzing venom. I ordered them to attack the hooded figures using parseltongue as I dropped back behind cover.

Luna had the presence of mind to perform a quick summoning charm to retrieve the wands of the Death Eaters that had been disarmed or disabled so far while Harry, Ron, Ginny, Neville, and Hermione kept throwing disarming charms and stunning hexes at the Death Eaters. The civilians were gone by this point, having apparated out or fled the area on foot successfully. Now, it was just those of us fighting.

With his wand away from him, I signaled Loki to move on from the pinned Death Eater and target others. A jet of green light narrowly missed my dog as a Death Eater threw a curse wildly in the face of the enormous green scaled chimera charging at him. He was immediately trampled as Loki ran past him to shoulder check a second Death Eater and club a third unconscious with his tail.

Before I could really get into the swing of the battle, it was over. Fifty masked Death Eaters lay unconscious on the ground, and not a single casualty on our side. That was suspicious, but there was no time to ask questions. We would have to rely on the Hogwarts security to handle whatever they were planning. Once the entire group was re-stunned for good measure, the aurors and Order members grabbed the unconscious Death Eaters and apparated just outside the gates of Hogwarts. Sloth and I followed with Loki using our Gate travel technique.

After chaining up the Death Eaters in the dungeon cells watched over by a gleeful Filch, Scrimgeour was outraged when we handed our wands over to Filch and insisted he and his escort do the same.

"We need to be checked over for signs of Imperius or Polyjuice," said Harry. "Any of us could've been hit with an Imperius curse or replaced by an imposter in the battle."

"You really think I'm letting you lock me up with the Death Eaters?" demanded Scrimgeour.

"It's not a matter of letting us," I said coolly. "You're in our sanctuary, and you'll abide by our security precautions. We're all being locked up too. You'll accept the full, three hour polyjuice check, the use of veritasyrum to verify your identity and allegiance, a legilimency scan by one of our people, every dark detector in the building shoved wherever Mr. Filch pleases, and you'll surrender your wands peacefully for all this to be done."

"And if I refuse?" said Scrimgeour.

"Do you see those slats in the walls?" I asked, pointing to a set of thin, vertical openings. "They're called murder holes. They allow spells to be cast into the room with little risk of retaliation. If you refuse, the people out there will just stun everyone in the room and force the issue while you're unconscious. I'd rather avoid that, being in the room with you, but if you make us, we will go that way."

"This is high treason," blustered Scrimgeour.

"Yes it is," said Harry. "Now that Tom's in charge of the Ministry, a lot of things including trying to figure out who his agents are counts as treason."

Scrimegeour and Harry stared one another down for a long moment, then Scrimgeour handed his wand over, with his Aurors following suit. Once we were all chained to a wall, Filch locked up our wands and retrieved the veritasyrum. While he was gone, we discussed the battle.

"Did that seem too easy to anyone else?" I asked. "They had us surprised and outnumbered, but no one on our side died."

"They weren't dueling to kill," said Lupin, "and they were avoiding firing into the crowd. They seemed to be trying to cut through the defenders and get to Harry."

"They weren't shy about throwing killing curses when we were grabbing the Dursleys," noted James, "and they didn't really switch over to them after the guests were gone and we were all that was left."

"The only killing curse I saw that whole fight was aimed at Loki," said Sloth, nodding to the brown dog chained near her.

"Think they've got a spy in our camp they didn't want to hit?" asked Sirius.

"We'll find out when we interrogate them," said Tonks. "In the meantime, I think even after we're cleared, we stay together in groups of at least three until we're done interrogating the prisoners, just in case."

"This is going to really delay our honeymoon, isn't it?" said Bill.

"The cottage should still be secure," said Fleur. "You are the secret keeper, and have told only people we trust."

"So, where are you going?" I asked Fleur conversationally.

"A lovely little house on the beach," she replied.

"Once we're sure everyone's who they say they are, I'm sure you'll be able to leave straight away," said Molly Weasley.

"Have to make sure none of us have turned traitor," said Fred gamely.

"It does somehow feel a lot less insulting knowing everyone's getting the same treatment," said George.

"Hmph," huffed Scrimgeour unhappily.

* * *

Once our identities were confirmed, we went over the captured Death Eaters. Only three of them had the Dark Mark branded on them, and they admitted to grabbing the rest off the street and using the Imperius curse to bolster their numbers. The Imperius curse was lifted from them once we pointed out it would lift automatically on their deaths and we would mildly prefer them alive. After verifying and double checking they were really innocent, those witches and wizards were released. They, and Scrimgeour's people were told they could either stay under Hogwarts' protection or leave for their own secure hiding places.

The three actual Death Eaters revealed that Voldemort had ordered them to take Harry alive, which was part of why they held back as much as they did. With polyjuice, anyone at the party could have really been Harry. The rest of it was just our side being superior duelists.

Ron revived a dozen murdered muggles using their wands, who were invited to enjoy the protection of Hogwarts like the many other newborn homunculi. It was nice not needing to be the one to do it. Much as I enjoyed my time before the Gate during human transmutations, knowing someone else was around, willing and able to do it, made me feel more secure.

Post owls delivered fresh copies of the Daily Prophet, with a headline indicating Harry was wanted for questioning in connection with Dumbledore's death. Another article announced Scrimgeour's resignation as Minister of Magic, and appointing Snape as his successor. A third article announced a new ministry department, the Muggleborn Registration Commission. Headed by Dolores Umbridge, this group claimed that there was no such thing as a muggleborn. Instead, they claimed that magical power in the hands of anyone without magical ancestors was a product of theft.

It was unclear whether Scrimgeour or myself was more outraged at the paper's contents. While Scrimgeour was vowing to make sure the magical world knew he'd been usurped rather than having retired, I stewed over the implications of Umbridge's new commission. When Scrimgeour and his Aurors left, I exploded into a rant.

"Six years, I have been studying magic! I have tried stealing the souls of wizards. I have tried potions! I have put so much time and effort into finding a way to acquire magic powers, and here she is, claiming it's so easy an untrained muggle eleven year old can do it! Worse, she's using it as an excuse to round up innocent people!"

"We're going to stop her, Greed," said Sloth gently.

"And we'll get the muggleborns they want to round up to Hogwarts for protection and education," said James.

* * *

Arthur and Percy used to work at the Ministry, so were prominent when planning our strike. Snape provided details about new security measures in place, and advice about how best to bypass them. He also provided a list of Death Eaters assigned to the Ministry, a list of people under the Imperius curse there, and a list of people just continuing to work there out of fear of threats to themselves or their families.

Anti-disapparition jinxes meant we couldn't plan on using that as an escape method once we got to the muggleborns being held captive. Instead, a number of touch activated portkeys were produced and given to the members of the strike team. While Harry wanted to go, we managed to convince him to stay at Hogwarts and coordinate the rest of the resistance efforts and monitor Voldemort using their connection.

Sloth, Lily, Percy, and I made up the strike team. Under the invisibility cloaks, we walked off Hogwarts grounds and apparated just outside the Ministry of Magic's new entrance. We had the luxury of picking our first targets, a pair of Death Eaters from Snape's list. After stunning them from under our cloaks, we dragged them off into a nearby building. A hair from each of their heads were put into flasks of polyjuice, and Lily and Percy took their appearances.

To make sure these two wouldn't come around and follow us, I extracted their souls with two of my coins. While Percy and Lily changed into their clothes, I used the grand arcanum array integrated into my wand and successfully harvested the life force from their soulless bodies to empower the red stone on my wand tip. This confirmed a theory I'd never been able to test before. The human lives that powered the Philosopher's Stone weren't the same thing as souls, and both could be harvested from fallen enemies.

We didn't dare wait for another Death Eater to arrive. Now that the polyjuice was in Percy and Lily, we were on a ticking clock. Sloth and I handed our wands, watches, and coins over to the other two to carry, then shape shifted into fleas. We rode on their heads as they entered separate bathrooms, opened stalls with special tokens taken from the Death Eaters, and flushed themselves down the toilet, coming out from fireplaces in the Ministry atrium.

It seemed the new coin operated entry system wasn't an addition to the security, but a replacement. The security desk with its wand weighing machine was gone. No guards were waving secrecy sensors over people as they came in. I supposed it made sense. Dark detectors wouldn't be much use to dark wizards.

Following the information Snape provided, we split up. Sloth and Lily went downstairs to rescue the muggleborns currently being held for trial. Percy and I headed up to Umbridge's office to get our hands on her files. With those, we could find out who was being targeted and hopefully get them to safety before the Ministry remembered they were hunting them.

Percy knew his way around this floor. His confidence combined with his assumed Death Eater identity meant no one questioned him as he strolled into the work space of the muggleborn registration commission. It also meant no one dared look close enough to notice Percy's expression of shock as he entered the room. Mounted to the door to Umbridge's office like a trophy was Mad-Eye Moody's magical eye. She must have been among the Death Eaters that night. Her stay in Azkaban had apparently helped her network.

Percy regained his composure and strode up to the door and pulled it open. He didn't glance behind him as he closed the door behind us. The workers did glance up, but lowered their eyes quickly. Umbridge wasn't in her office, which was decorated exactly the same as her office in Hogwarts had been. I hopped off Percy's head and shape shifted into Umbridge.

"Hand me a red stone," I told Percy, making my way to the filing cabinet.

Percy complied, then put his eye to the peculiar telescopic device attached to the door. Apparently, it allowed one to look through Moody's eye on the other side. I put a hand on Umbridge's filing cabinet and absorbed hte names, locations, blood statuses, and other details on every person, muggleborn or not, that the Ministry wanted removed. Pocketing the burnt out red stone, I clapped then touched the top of the cabinet. Blue sparks of alchemic light surged across it as the ink in the files rearranged itself, scrambling the information to the point of uselessness.

"Is it done?" asked Percy when I tapped him on the shoulder.

"I have all the records and they have nothing," I said proudly.

"I don't think anyone suspects anything yet. We should go."

"Let me have a look," I said.

Percy stepped aside and I put my eye up to the telescope. I could see Umbridge's workers hunched over their desks, eyes downcast. A set of knobs allowed me to strip away layers, looking through desks, walls, and clothes. I wasn't leaving a tool like this in Death Eater hands. Eventually, someone would remember it can see through invisibility cloaks, and that would make our job much harder.

"Another stone, quick," I demanded of Percy.

I removed the telescopic mechanism for examination while Percy got out another red stone. Using the red stone, I created a fake eye identical to Moody's. Then I modified the telescopic attachment into something akin to a muggle view master. I pocketed the real eye and reassembled the mechanism with my fake in place. Looking through, I saw a still image of the workers hunched over their desks. Hopefully, it would fool Umbridge for a while anyway.

"Is that everything, or did you want to plant some dung bombs while we're here?" asked Percy, rolling his eyes.

"The eye was a target of opportunity," I said. "We can discuss it when the mission's over."

I opened the door, putting on the falsely sweet expression Umbridge wore when addressing her lessers and crossed the muggleborn registration commission work space with the workers actively avoiding looking up. In the lift, we headed down to the bottom level.

"They're in the old courtroom a level below the Department of Mysteries," said Percy when we were alone in the lift. "The lift doesn't go all the way down. There's a staircase that'll take us the rest of the way."

"Snape said they're using dementors to guard the prisoners," I said. "A full patronus would give us away. I'll need a patronus pin under my robe."

Percy rummaged through my bag and found the pin. He and Lily already had them under their robes. Once I had the pin in place, Percy and I descended the steps. It was encouraging to see the hall empty despite seating for more than a dozen outside the courtroom. My right eye shriveled and vanished in its socket and I popped Moody's eye in.

My thought was to quickly look through the wall, verify who was there, and adjust my disguise accordingly. Instead, I saw Lily chained to the chair in the center of the court room still in her Death Eater disguise. She was too far away to confirm if Sloth was still disguised as a flea in her hair or not. Umbridge was presiding over the court. A cat patronus was shielding her and her subordinates from the effect of the dozens of dementors in the room. From the blank look on Lily's face, they'd taken her patronus pin.

Trelawney's prophecies rang in my ears. "You will fall to despair darker than death." "You will achieve your goal, but only after losing that which is most precious to you." Blue light raced across my body, and I resumed my pale skinned homunculus form. My boots bore their transmutation circles once again and my vest showed off the oroboros mark on my chest. Flame alchemy arrays were on the back of each hand and shield arrays were on each wrist. I ran my tongue over my pointed, shark like teeth as the last sparks from the transformation arced through my black, spiked hair. Moody's blue eye was still in my right socket, now paired with my slitted purple left eye.

"Fuck subtlety," I said. "Summon a full patronus now." I kicked the wall. The transmutation circle on my shoe caused fragments of the wall to explode like an enormous shotgun. Dementors were struck by the fragments and tossed backward. Moody's eye let me know where Lily was so I could avoid any fragments heading her way.

Percy, to his credit, didn't hesitate, and performed the patronus charm before the dust had settled. The silver weasel streaked into the room, driving back those dementors that hadn't been knocked away by my alchemy. The moment the silver creature interposed itself, the heavy iron chains fell through Lily's body. Sloth was still there.

"Acio wand!" called out Lily, raising her right hand as she stood. Her wand, which had been sitting on the desk in front of Umbridge, flew into her hand.

I rushed into the court room and stomped a foot. Glowing blue, dozens of stone hands reached up from the ground to bind and restrain the dementors. Percy threw a stunning hex at the judge's bench and disabled the witch who was taking hte minutes.

"Sectumsempra!" yelled Lily as she slashed her wand in Umbridge's direction. A huge gash opened in the woman's chest where Lily's curse hit. Umbridge collapsed, bleeding out.

"Are you okay?" asked Percy. "What happened?"

"The dementors can smell our patronus pins," reported Lily as Umbridge gurgled and choked on her own blood behind her. "We got the muggleborns out with the portkeys, but Umbridge summoned the pin protecting us from the dementors. Without it, we were easy prey."

I quickly retrieved the patronus pin, the remaining portkeys, and the rest of the confiscated possessions from Umbridge's corpse. Sloth hopped off Lily's head and resumed her true form, throwing her arms around me. Sparing one last baleful glance at the dementors, I used a portkey to return us to Hogwarts.

* * *

"When I saw you captured by the dementors, I thought Trelawney's prophecy had come true and I'd lost you," I said once we were back in the school waiting out our security quarenteen.

"It was aweful," said Sloth between bites of chocolate Madam Pomfrey had provided when we explained about the dementor confrontation. "That patronus got there just in time. I don't know how much longer I could've lasted. Thank you, Percy."

"I'm just glad we made it out of there in one piece," said Percy.

"And that we did what we went there to do," finished Lily. "Finishing off that woman like I should've done sooner was a bonus."

"The records we recovered should let us get to the other muggleborns well ahead of the Death Eaters," I said. "The pickups should be simple and safe enough that it won't need full combat teams. We should take some time to recuperate so we'll be at our best when our next big mission comes."

"That's a good idea," said Sloth. "I don't think I could take another mission involving dementors right now."

Harry came in with Filch to unlock our manacles a few hours later. After getting our things back, Sloth and I followed Harry down to the Chamber of Secrets to help process the captured Death Eater wands. Ron was already waiting with a stack of coins prepared with blood seals.

"Harry, I wanted to ask," I began when the door to the Chamber slid closed behind us, "what are we going to do with Moody's magical eye? Is the plan ot use it for castle security, or did you want to have someone on each strike team wear it?"

"What?" asked Harry. "I was going to bury it. Who knows what the Death Eaters did with the rest of his body. This is probably our only chance to give him a proper burial."

"That eye is a unique artifact that could be of inestimable help in the war effort," I argued. "Just because the Death Eaters didn't see that is no reason for us to overlook it. They wouldn't have gotten the drop on us in the Hall of Prohpecy so easily if one of us had been wearing it then."

"He's got a point," said Ron. "I mean, if Dumbledore was really dead would you bury the Elder Wand with him?"

"I didn't know Moody very well," said Sloth, "but I know he wanted to keep us safe. If his eye could help do that, don't you think he'd want us to use it instead of burrying it?"

"Okay, we'll keep the eye," said Harry, "but we aren't mounting it to a wall like Umbridge did."

"Agreed," I said. "Any of the homunculi could use it, then regenerate their missing eye when they take it out."

"Not me," said Ron, emphatically. "Regeneration or no, gouging out an eye hurts."

"I just shape shifted mine away," I said. "No pain."

"Okay, but it is still gross," said Ron. "I mean, he was wearing it when he died."

"You don't have to be the one to use it, Ron," said Harry.

"Look," I said, "I was already planning on going grave robbing if you stuck to your 'bury it' plan. I'll volunteer to use it if no one else wants to."

"Take it," said Harry, holding out the eye. "Moody willed all his possessions to the Order, so that means I'm allowed to decide what we do with it. Most of the rest of the Order members who could use it won't want to. So, I'm just giving it to you. Call it an early Christmas present. Not like you haven't given me some doozies."

"I won't dishonor his memory," I said solemnly as I accepted the eye and affixed it in my socket.

"That settled, let's get back to raising dead people who want to be raised," said Ron, indicating the captured wands.

* * *

Author's comments:  
Scrimgeour survived because Harry and his parents forced him to clean house the previous year during Christmas. That slowed down the Death Eaters' efforts to infiltrate and assassinate him and resulted in them successfully driving him off, but not capturing or killing him.


	46. Chapter 62: Identifying Final Horcrux

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 62) Identifying the Final Horcrux  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

With Voldemort in command of the Ministry through Snape, Scrimgeour was trying to run a government in exile from Hogwarts. He'd managed to expose the fact that Voldemort had taken over to the general wizarding public. Snape was undermining Voldemort's legitimacy with a series of brutal crackdowns, making it impossible for people to ignore the fact that they were in a country ruled by a dark lord.

Between the Daily Prophet reporters, the resisting citizens, and more muggles than expected, I found myself needing to make weekly trips to the Minister's office via portkey to exchange Snape's filled soul coins for empty ones. Care had been taken to ensure the rescued souls didn't reveal themselves, and thus Snape, once returned to the flesh. Members of the Order of the Phoenix split their time between bringing targeted muggleborns and their families to Hogwarts and counseling the new homunculi about the importance of pretending to be dead.

Every life Snape saved increased the chances he'd be found out as a traitor, but he was, at most, indifferent to that possibility. His courage appeared greater still in light of the fact that, like Moody, Snape shared bonds of love with no one, and thus could not be called back by the Resurrection Stone. Assuming Voldemort didn't have his soul fed to the dementors.

As we desperately tried to save as many people as we could from Voldemort's regime, some unexpected good news came in. Lupin and Tonks were going to have a baby. Tonks had gone off red stones in an effort to avoid poisoning her child, and asked me to remove any still in her system, which I did. Using Moody's eye to check on the fetus and a red stone to clear away any lingering red water traces from the placenta whenever crystals started to form, I was able to offer meaningful prenatal care.

"So, homunculi aren't sterile," said Sloth after Tonks left the examination room.

"We'll have to keep a close eye on things," I said. "We can only guess at the sorts of complications she might have. It's probably a good thing she's a metamorphmagus. She's used to consciously controlling her form. Less likely she'll accidentally shape shift the baby away."

"I might be able to have children too," said Sloth, deep in thought. "I'd have to shift to an adult form and hold it, but it's an option. I'd given up on the idea."

"Do you want children?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "It's not something I've given much thought to. Definitely not now, but somewhere down the road... It's good to be an immortal."

"You'll get no argument from me," I said.

* * *

The House tables in the Great Hall had been magically enlarged along with the Hall itself to accommodate the many guests now living in the castle. Adult wizards sat at thee table of the House they attended in school. Muggles sat with their family members when possible. The muggles rescued from Death Eater attacks who lacked wizard relatives occupied the space at the Slytherin table where the majority of the Death Eaters and their allies would have been sitting. The true Slytherins made every effort to be welcoming to the muggles, at least in part to demonstrate to everyone they weren't with the Death Eaters.

While the carriages and boats were too undefended to be used this year, it would take more than the most powerful Dark Lord of all time seizing control of magical Britain to stop the Hogwarts sorting ceremony. The ritual was a welcome bit of normalcy after everything that had happened. The hat's song this year praised the unity we were demonstrating, and reminded us all of the virtues each House contributed that together made the school safe and strong.

The new first years were more nervous than any year before them. Half of them had been brought to Hogwarts with their families weeks ago by Order members dispatched to warn them of the danger of the Death Eaters. Others had been brought by their families, who knew full well that the castle was the only place the might be safe. The combined crowd of students, warriors, and refugees occupying the tables focused their attention on the new witches and wizards who would still be beginning their education. We cheered ever student, whatever house they were sorted into. When the last student was sorted, Professor McGonagall rose and the Great Hall fell silent.

"New and returning students, distinguished alumni, and honored guests, it is my distinct privilege to welcome you all to another year at Hogwarts. Ordinarily, I would hold off on any announcements until after the start of term feast, but this is not an ordinary year. For the sake of everyone's appetites, I will attempt to be brief.

"As many of you are no doubt aware, the loss of Professor Dumbledore last year has necessitated a number of staffing changes. Because my duties as headmistress will no longer leave me time to teach, I would like to welcome your new Transfiguration professor, James Potter. Joining him as your new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor is Sirius Black. While I am certain both men will be happy to answer any questions you may have, I want to offer my personal assurances that both have been thoroughly vetted by both myself and the Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour.

"Now, many of you will have noticed changes in the castle's layout, particularly the shrunken windows. While the Dark Lord Tom Riddle has not yet seen fit to camp an army outside our gates, the faculty is taking that threat seriously. As such, we have officially declared the castle to be in a state of siege.

"I am afraid that both Quidditch and Hogsmeade weekends are canceled until further notice, and that Care of Magical Creatures classes and fling lessons for first years will take place indoors. Additionally, while Hogwarts has always had a curfew, I'm afraid circumstances require us to be more strict in enforcing it than usual. Anyone caught out of bed will be assumed to be a Death Eater infiltrator or under the Imperius curse and confined to a cell in the dungeons under the supervision of Mr. Filch. It may take some time to confirm a case of mere rule breaking, so I strongly recommend avoiding the situation altogether.

"A bit of good news regarding our current situation. Despite our large number of guests and our inability to send people out for basic provisions, the house elves have assured me that they will have no trouble providing the sane quality of food we have all come to expect. And on that note, let the feast begin."

"I've spoken with the house elves about it," said Luna as roast pig, boiled potatoes, and dozens of other flawlessly prepared dushes materialized before us. "They're actually really excited. I don't think they've been feeling challenged lately. Even Winky perked up and pitched in."

"Wow," I said, filling my plate. "And I was thinking I might have to stop eating to help stretch our food stores."

McGonagall announced James and Slughorn as hew heads of house after we'd finished desert, then we prefects escorted our newest housemates up to their dorms. Ravenclaw tower was one of hte rooms most effected by all the security changes over the summer. The enormous windows overlooking the grounds had been reduced to archery slits. The enchantments on the brass eagle knocker had been modified to accept an emergency password known only to the prefects that would both open the door and raise the alarm if used. The fireplaces had been disconnected from the floo network. The many bookshelves stood unmoved. Some things were sacred.

* * *

Last term, NEWT students studied wordless magic. This year, we were studying wandless magic. Both wands and spoken incantations served to increase the power and control of a spell. Being able to perform complex magic without those aids prepared students to not be completely helpless when disarmed and meant that spells cast with both would be more potent. Wands were still used for new spells we were learning this year, but all the spells we'd already been taught, we'd have to perform wandlessly. Sloth and I were able to manage by making sure to keep red stones in our pockets.

James was in a hurry to demonstrate himself responsible as a transfiguration teacher, and so we jumped right in to conjuring matter out of nothing. As I'd been doing much the same in charms for some time now, I didn't find the spells difficult to emulate. The theory continued to be pleasantly challenging, but nothing we did was more difficult to emulate than that snake conjuring charm from second year.

While most of the school treated Charms as a soft option, we were deep into territory I couldn't duplicate from our first day back with undetectable extension charms. No amount of practice or encouragement would make alchemy capable of half the charms taught this year. I continued to study the theory and go through the wand motions for the spells, but it was pretty clear I wasn't going to pass my charms NEWT unless this was the year I cracked granting myself real magic.

Sirius' teaching of Defense Against the Dark Arts was very differant from his time impersonating Umbridge. He dispensed entirely with Ministry approved curriculum and recommendations, and seemed utterly unconcerned with the contents of the NEWT. He instead focused on the threat at hand.

"Most of you can already form a full bodied patronus," said Sirius in his first lesson. "You're all going to be able to within the next few weeks. Dementors are the darkest and strongest beings in Tom's armies, and you will be able to drive them off. Once I'm sure you've mastered that, we're going to get familiar with the Dark Arts themselves. Before this year is out, you'll be able to turn fiendfyre against its master, recognize a horcrux on sight, heal wounds inflicted with dark magic, and generally understand the tool set of a dark wizard better than most dark wizards do."

* * *

Despite using my time turner to attend my NEWT classes, the first week passed surprisingly fast. The Death Eaters were consolidating their gains and hadn't tried to make a move on Hogwarts yet. Harry used small doses of felix felicis to help him look into Voldemort's mind. Grevorovitch wasn't an easy man to find even before Krum sent him word Voldemort was looking for him.

Taking advantage of Voldemort's single minded focus on the Elder Wand, we used the resources at Hogwarts to look into artifacts of the remaining founders. Everything we read in the library indicated the sword and hat were the only significant artifacts Godric Gryffindor left behind. As to Ravenclaw, there was only one option: the Lost Diadem.

In seeking founders artifacts, Voldemort would have had to use the same resources we had. Madam Pince, the Hogwarts librarian had always considered her books her top priority, and had kept immaculate records of who had checked out what books. Tom Riddle's reading list helped verify Dumbledore's theory. Voldemort had definitely been seeking Ravenclaw's diadem. It was impossible, however, that he had found it using just the resources of the library.

While the eight of us waited in the Chamber of Secrets for Headless Nick in anticipation of our fencing lessons, Harry questioned Slytherin's basilisk on everything she had discussed with Riddle. Apparently, Riddle hadn't given any thought to the ancient serpent as a potential source of information, and merely regarded her as a weapon to dispatch against his enemies. Not making the same mistake, Harry did ask what she knew about the founders, their artifacts, and particularly, Ravenclaw's diadem. She'd been kept in the Chamber of Secrets at the time, visited only by Slytherin himself, so she didn't have anything useful about the last horcurx.

"Hey, Nick," greeted Harry as the Gryffindor house ghost floated in, "do you know if any of the castle's ghosts were around in the founders' time?"

"As a matter of fact, the Bloody Barron often boasts that he was hand picked for his house by Slytherin himself. I believe he may be the oldest ghost in Hogwarts. Why do you ask?"

"The Slytherin house ghost?" asked Harry. "Tom was looking for immortality, and the Bloody Barron would be easy to get on his own for a private chat."

"He's also terrifying," said Ron, "but that'd only be a deterrent for people who aren't planning to become immortal dark lords when they grew up."

"Do you think you could convince the Barron to meet us?" asked Hermione. "We need to ask him about Tom Riddle's school days."

"If you like, I can bring him down here at tomorrow's lesson," said Sir Nicholas. "He happens to be quite a skilled swordsman himself, and I'd love to show him the progress you've all made."

* * *

Slytherin's house ghost was a dour faced nobleman, who's expensive shirt was stained with spectral blood. Heavy looking spectral chains clanked and clattered loudly as the spirit wearing them followed Headless Nick into the Chamber of Secrets. Though he had been personally chosen as a student by Salazar Slytherin, this was the first time the ancient specter had been inside. He spoke in a low, raspy voice.

"You wished to speak with me?"

"Yes, er, thank you for coming," said Harry.

The Bloody Barron stared with a morose expression on his face and waited for Harry to continue.

"Do you know where the Lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw is?" asked Luna, getting to the point.

"No," said the Barron. "Rowena Ravenclaw stopped wearing it in the years before her death. After her passing, it was never found among her possessions."

"Did Tom Riddle ask you about the Diadem or any artifacts of the founders while he was in school?" asked Hermione.

The Bloody Barron puffed up, looking affronted and said, "I wear these chains as a penance for my sins. I have never pretended to be perfect. But for all my failings, I would never betray the secrets of the founders. I know the reputation my house has garnered-"

"This isn't about you being a Slytherin," said Ginny. "I'm a Gryffindor and Riddle used me like he used everyone else. He was charming and good at feigning sympathy."

"We're not looking to assign blame," said Neville. "We just want to stop him and we think he was looking to make Ravenclaw's diadem into a horcrux. If he succeeded, we need to destroy it."

"I don't know where it is, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell Tom Riddle or you," declared the Bloody Barron. "Sir Nicholas, I believe I've seen enough. However their fencing is going, I won't stand here and have my honor questioned in Salazar Slytherin's own chamber."

When the Bloody Barron had left, I asked Sir Nicholas, "Why does he wear those chains?"

"I've never asked," said Headless Nick.

"In five hundred years?" I asked.

"It's called tact," said Nick.

"Tactful or no," said Sloth, "we know Tom got information out of Slughorn. If anyone who was here when he was here knows anything about his plans, potential artifacts he'd have wanted to make a horcrux out of, or anything else that might be connected, we need to know about it."

"I will speak with the other ghosts," promised Sir Nicholas. "In the meantime, I'll need you to pair off and switch on your blades. We will be sparring at full force and speed. Double check that your blades are set to nonlethal."

* * *

For the next few weeks, we were able to focus on our schoolwork, since neither information about the final horcrux, nor about the location of Voldemort's snake was forthcoming. The workload in NEWT year was about what I was expecting, and made for a terrific distraction to keep from dwelling on the lack of progress at eliminating Voldemort. Fortunately, he was no closer to finding Gregorovitch. He'd found the wand maker's home weeks ago, but Krum's forewarning had allowed him to go on the run.

Voldemort's growing frustration was making Harry's job easier. With every flash of anger, Voldemort's occlumency barriers weakened, allowing Harry a brief glimpse into his mind. Harry was being cautious in his probing, and hadn't seen anything horcrux related. He did learn a good deal about Voldemort's day to day activities.

Voldemort didn't sleep. Whatever magical transformations he had undergone removed the human need for a period of dormancy. This basically killed any thought of taking advantage of his inability to use dark detectors and assassinating him when he was vulnerable. He'd also modified himself to be immune to most poisons, shutting down that avenue of attack.

Dumbledore said that Nagini not being with him was a good sign, since that meant he wasn't worried for the safety of his horcurx, but wherever she was, Harry only ever managed brief flashes of the interior of a dilapidated house, not enough to find the location and stage a raid to kill it.

I would have thought that in his enthusiasm, Hagrid would have run out of terrifying monsters by now, but I was wrong. He went the extra mile for our education, smuggling foreign creatures into the school, under the noses of hte Death Eater controlled Ministry. Charlie even helped smuggle Norbert back in. Charlie had identified the Norwegan Ridgeback as female and had redubbed her Norberta. He was helping Hagrid keep Norberta under control and did a guest lecture on dragon handling.

Trelawney's Divination classes were requiring ever more precise interpretations of our star charts, tarot cards, rune stones, and tea laves. Also, a first in the class, she was now checking our predictions for accuracy. Apparently, there were existing charts and tables for determining a seer's accuracy that accounted for the number of details in the prophecy, the length of time until it came to pass, and how many of hte details hit or missed. This would have been a really useful tool earlier, but Professor Trelawney said introducing such cold, rigid instruments into the process to early would stunt the development of the inner eye.

Sirius was enjoying the chance to demonize the so-called head Death Eater, Snape, during his Defense class. When discussing how many of the most dangerous dark wizards create their own spells, he used Snape's sectumsempra as an example. The spell created sword-like gashes that were resistant to conventional healing, requiring a specific countercurse to mend the damage. Sirius recommended stealing enemy spells for your own use whenever possible, commenting on the irony of besting a dark wizard using a spell they created themselves.

At the beginning of October, Harry called us down to the Chamber of Secrets. The Grey Lady, ghost of Ravenclaw tower,had come to him with information on the Lost Diadem. Apparently, it had never been lost. The Grey Lady, known in life as Helena Ravenclaw, Rowena's daughter, had stolen the diadem and run away to the forests of Albania. The Bloody Barron had been sent to bring her back to Hogwarts, but had ended up killing her. He then killed himself for that failure and continues to punish himself for it a thousand years later.

"She told Tom about the Diadem," said Harry. "We know what the last horcrux was. Helena told him exactly how to find it."

"We should check the original hiding spot," I said. "If it stayed hidden for a thousand years there, he might have decided that was a good spot to leave it."

"He didn't leave a horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets," Harry reminded me. "We should still check, but let's not get our hopes up. Plus, there's still the snake before this is all done."

"Still, at least knowing for sure what it is we're looking for leaves us closer than we were," said Hermione, encouragingly. "Now, we have a complete list of horcruxes."

"Oh no," said Harry, suddenly, closing his eyes. "He's found him. Tom caught up with Gregorovitch."

"Where are they?" asked Sloth. "We can try and mount a rescue."

"It's... it's too late," said Harry, blinking back tears. "He's already dead. Tom took what he needed from Gregorovitch's mind then killed him. He saw the thief who stole the Elder Wand, but neither Tom nor Gregorovitch recognized him as Grindewald. It's only a matter of time before he figures it out."

Ginny squeezed Harry's hand comfortingly, grounding him back in his own body and mind once the vision from Voldemort had passed.

"Was Tom still using his phoenix feather wand when he killed Gregorovitch?" asked Ron. "Did he use the killing curse?"

"He did," said Harry. "I don't think he's destroying his own wand until he has the Elder wand as his replacement."

"So, we can still get Gregorovitch back if we can take Tom's wand or pit him against Harry again for another prior incantum," said Ron, nodding.

"Will we know when he figures out it's Grindewald he's after?" asked Neville.

"I don't know," admitted Harry. "I can usually get in when he's feeling strong emotions, and I think that eureka moment will qualify, but it isn't a sure thing."

"So, is it back to regular classes until then?" asked Luna.

Harry nodded. "I'll send Percy to check for the diadem in Albania. He was under Crouch Sr. in the Department of International Magical Cooperation."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Both sides are making progress toward their goals, but only the light side knows they're in a race.


	47. Chapter 63: The Advantages of the Light

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 63) The Advantages of the Light Side  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

By Halloween, Voldemort still hadn't had his eureka moment. Sloth and had both stopped disguising ourselves among our fellow students, and had taken, instead, to using our shape shifting powers to find privacy in the overcrowded school. Every night, we shrunk down until we could fit comfortably inside a snuffbox I kept on top of my trunk in Ravenclaw tower, and fell asleep in each other's arms.

On the night after the Halloween feast, I woke with a sudden realization. I shook Sloth awake, both to share my insight, and to make sure she was all right. Given the number of predictions Trelawney had made about something awful happening to her, I was a little on edge.

"Greed? What's wrong?" Sloth asked as she faded back into consciousness.

"I cracked it," I said, not completely sure how I felt about my accomplishment. "I know how the two of us can get magic."

"You did? How?" she was fully awake now, smiling and hanging on my every word.

"It's not a perfect plan," I hedged. "The method I'm pretty sure will work probably isn't what we want to use, but it gives us a direction to go to look for something more practical."

"What's the method?" asked Sloth.

"Horcruxes," I said. "People haven't experimented much with them, for obvious reasons, but based on Harry, we know making another person a horcrux involves them getting your magical powers. He's a natural parselmouth because he's a horcrux."

"You think of someone makes us into horcruxes like Harry, we'll be able to do magic? But I have Lockheart's soul and still can't do it."

"Horcruxes fundamentally alter the nature of the soul fragment," I said. "If a human dies, the soul just detaches harmlessly from the body, but destroying a horcurx destroys the piece of soul outright. There's also a fragment of consciousness in the soul fragment that I deliberately wiped clean when harvesting Lockheart's soul."

"That would explain why Lucius Malfoy still has his powers. You never cleared his consciousness. I'm still not sure how this helps us, though."

"It doesn't," I said. "Not really. A horcurx is created through murder, and regret unmakes it. If we use the kind of sadistic dark wizard who'd never regret what he did like Tom, we'd be contributing to keeping a person like that immortal. A good wizard would never do it in the first place, and would eventually regret it if he did. And that's laying aside the basic moral issue of murdering people for power that neither of us is on board with."

"True," said Sloth. "Killing in battle isn't the same as murder, and the former won't do the job for making a horcrux."

"The thing is," I said, "there's been so little research on horcruxes, I'm not sure where to begin looking for more information."

"Why not follow in the footsteps of the Three Brothers?" asked Sloth.

"The ones who made the Deathly Hallows?" I asked, confused.

"Come on, you've figured out what really happened, haven't you?"

"What really happened?" I repeated.

"So, I really got there before you did?" asked Sloth, elated. "Okay, you know how the story opens. Three brothers come upon a dangerous river and use their magic to cross it safely. For doing so, Death offers each of them a reward. The story goes on from there with the brothers being destroyed by their gifts, but the important thing is the river no one could cross without dying, magic used to survive it, and the brothers leaving with objects that are possible to make but who's principals no one's been able to figure out in the hundreds of years since."

"I'm still not sure I understand," I admitted.

"The river in the story was the Gate," said Sloth. "Probably the same permanently open archway we entered through. No idea who opened it originally, but random muggles stumbling across it would end up dismembered and dead quick. I think the brothers found it and conjured that veil that stops the Gate Children from reaching out."

"They would've seen the Truth in the process, granting them the knowledge needed to make their famous Hallows," I said, catching on.

"Exactly," said Sloth. "Everything's in there. All the answers. You just need the right context if you're going to retain a particular piece of it."

"So, with all the magical theory I've learned, and this new piece of the puzzle, it might be as simple as opening the Gate."

"And if you're lucky, you'll also come out of it with the ability to make Hallows too," added Sloth.

"Do you think?" I asked.

"Only one way to find out," she countered.

Sloth and I both clapped our hands, and the Gate opened. Shadowy black hands reached out and began deconstructing our bodies. I let my regenerative powers keep me intact while I focused on the Truth. The horcurx technique would work, but no way around hte obvious flaws was within the narrow range of omniscience I could properly internalize. As to the Hallows, all the information was there. Improved wand design concepts, a theoretical framework for longer lasting spells like the ones on Harry's invisibility cloak,and a proper explanation of the underlying principals of the Resurrection Stone.

The Gate swung shut, and Sloth and I looked at one another as we finished regenerating. I spoke first. "The Resurrection Stone really does work because the bonds of love are stronger than death."

"It fits with the sacrificial protection saving Harry from the killing curse," said Sloth. "I don't think any magic or alchemy short of an enormous Philosopher's Stone will let me bring back the people she killed."

* * *

I was starting to suspect the "despair darker than death" Trelawney warned Sloth about had nothing to do with dementors. She was still carrying around a lot of guilt from a time in her life when her father had her under what amounted to mind control and used her as a weapon. The Resurrection Stone, and related knowledge had seemed like a way to make things right once and for all, and finally leave that chapter of her life behind. Finding out that not only would the Stone not work for what she wanted, but even the underlying principle it operated on was useless to her was not good for her mood.

If we didn't have hte routine of going to class and studying for the NEWT, I'm not sure she'd have been able to motivate herself to get out of bed. As it was, she stayed functional by burying herself in schoolwork, even going over my notes from subjects she'd dropped or never bothered to take in order to keep her mind occupied. It was a godsend when, in mid November, Harry approached us with a mission.

Nagini had been located. Voldemort's snake horcrux had been left to keep watch over the small village of Godric's Hallow. The Potters' family home was there, along with their graves, though those had been emptied years ago when James and Lily came back as homunculi. Apparently, she was stationed there inside the animated corpse of an old woman so she could report to Voldemort if Harry came to visit the town.

Regulus Black was practically bounding on his tiptoes in anticipation of the mission, and while Harry entrusted him with the Sword of Gryffindor, he wanted Sloth and I to go along and keep the former Death Eater on mission. He especially wanted us to keep from making a scene by cutting down what looked like an old woman in the street. I was to use Moody's eye to verify our target before we took action.

Portkeys deposited the three of us outside the village. We'd dressed in muggle coats and scarves, and I wore a knitted cap pulled down over the enchanted false eye. Regulus' coat was long enough to conceal the Sword of Gryffindor.

No one gave us a second look as I looked through walls into people's houses and inside people's bodies, trying to spot the snake before she spotted us. I found her inside a dusty, ill kept home. Wanting to maintain the element of surprise, the three of us joined hands and stepped through the wall right into the room with Nagini.

I clapped, and a layer of frost covered the windows so no one looking in would see what was about to transpire. Sloth circled toward the nearest exit to block it off. Regulus flung open his coat and drew Gryffindor's sword.

"They say you can see and hear through this creature's eyes, Lord Voldemort," said Regulus, making sure Tom was paying attention. "Know it was Regulus Black who cut down your serpent and severed this connection to the mortal world."

As Regulus rushed at the old woman, he swung the sword clumsily overhead. He'd obviously never studied swordsmanship. Despite that, the blade struck home, cleaving into the shoulder of the corpse puppet Nagini hid within. Nagini quickly exited the body as Regulus tried to dislodge the weapon from the discarded corpse.

Nagini tried to bite Sloth to get her out of the way and escape the room. Sloth smirked as Nagini's jaw and venomous fangs were severed from her body by the same application of the Ultimate Escape that had caused Loki's death years ago. Impressive reflexes allowed Nagini to spring back away from Sloth before she lost any more flesh to Sloth's powers.

Dripping blood from the open wound on her face, Voldemort's serpent sprang at Regulus just as he'd managed to free the sword. His body constricted by the snake, he couldn't raise the sword for a fresh strike. I snapped my fingers, setting both Nagini and Regulus on fire with flame alchemy. Not being able to regenerate, Nagini got he worst of it and reflexively loosened her coils to try and escape the flames.

A wave of blue alchemic light passed over Regulus' face, restoring him to perfect health as he brought the basilisk venom infused, goblin silver blade down on the wounded and writing snake. The twisting stopped and the snake laid dead at our feet. Then Voldemort apparated into the room, his inhuman features a mask of rage.

A killing curse blasted from Voldemort's wand and struck Regulus an instant after he apparated. Confronting Voldemort wasn't the mission, so before Regulus hit the ground, Sloth and I both grabbed him and the sword and touched our return portkeys back to Hogwarts. Regulus was laughing when he regenerated back to life.

* * *

Centaurs and acromantula were herded into the dungeon while hte three of us were having our identities verified and our minds checked for tampering. Neither species was happy about being shackled in the Hogwarts dungeon for any length of time, but they tolerated it because the alternative was being left to the mercy of the Death Eaters gathering outside the gates. At first, I thought this was simply a retaliatory action for our strike on Nagini, but when Harry came in to check us over with legilimency, I learned there was more to it than that.

Harry locked eyes with me, and once he was satisfied I was still myself, still in control of my own actions, and still on side, he used legilimency in a way I hadn't encountered before, to project thoughts and memories rather than read them. I saw what Harry had seen through his connection to Voldemort when he realized what we had done, and what that implied we knew about his immortality.

Voldemort's thoughts had shot through a panicked list of his horcrux locations, noting the need to check them personally to verify their safety. A retribution strike on Hogwarts by the Death Eaters for killing his pet was a pretense so he wouldn't have to tell his followers his real reason. A horcrux had been hidden in Hogwarts. Now that he knew we were looking for them, he was less certain of its safety there.

Snape had been delegated the task of taking the school using the Ministry's resources while Voldemort himself had gone alone to check on his other horcruxes. In his pocket, Voldemort carried a picture that had caught his eye in the dilapidated house after we left. It was a wizard photo of a young Gridewald. He now knew the old dark lord was his next stop in his quest for the Elder Wand. A quest he intended to resume after checking on his horcruxes.

"It's a good thing we had Hagrid get a plan ready," said Harry. "There wasn't much warning when we had to evacuate the forbidden forest. The people in Hogsmeade were a lot quicker and easier to get to the safety of the castle."

"If we can find and destroy the last horcrux quickly, we might have a chance at ending this in the ambush at Grindewald's cell," I said, hopefully. "Then we can mop up any remaining loyalists and everyone can get back to their lives."

"You've still got your bugs all over the castle, right?" confirmed Harry.

I nodded. "I'll set them looking as soon as I'm out of here."

"Go," said Harry. "Both of you. I finished your checks."

So, I did just that, gathering all my metal surveillance bugs in the Ravencaw common room, and dispatched them to scour every inch of the school for the diadem depicted on Rowena Ravenclaw's statue. Sloth distributed pictures of the diadem to every living thing currently taking shelter in the castle. No one had seen it.

Meanwhile, the Death Eaters had gathered outside the castle, supported by giants, inferi, dementors, and no doubt numerous ordinary wizards bound by the Imperius curse. Members of the DA rose to the challenge, going to the highest levels of the castle and conjuring a veritable wall of silvery patronuses, successfully keeping the army of dementors at a distance. The giants tried hurling trees and boulders at the castle, but the arrays I'd applied ensured that nay damage they did was instantly repaired. The enemy wizards couldn't get close enough to accurately send curses through the shrunken windows, because any time they approached they were pelted by screaming mandrake seedlings. Hogwarts was a fortress, and now it was proving it.

The inferi could and did approach, only to be driven back by conjured flames of teachers, Order members, Aurors, and any other witch or wizard willing and able to lend a wand in the fight. Things got even worse for the Death Eaters once the centaurs had been cleared. Unwilling to deal with the shape of being defended by humans, they took their bows and showed us what battlements and archery slots were really for. Unable to approach and harassed by centaur arrows, the Death Eaters were forced to fall back to the forbidden forrest to regroup.

Harry was occupied with monitoring Voldemort as he checked on his other horcruxes. His rage and fear built as he saw every hiding place ransacked. The ring missing, the locket replaced by Regulus' fake with the mocking note. By the time he reached Gringotts, all sense of subtlety and proportionate response had fled the dark lord's mind.

Every secret passage, hidden room, and dead end hallway had been searched by the castle's residents. People looked behind every painting, under every piece of furnature, and inside every suit of armor. I used my time turner to get a dozen of me looking at once. Moody's eye let me look inside walls and statues, penetrate invisibility enchantments, and avoid having my vision impaired by the crowds of people turning the castle upside down. I found a number of hiding places and walled up rooms I didn't know existed before, but none of them contained Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem.

Out of places to look, I regrouped with the others in the Chamber of Secrets, which we'd searched so many times and in so many ways, it was less likely to be there than almost anywhere else in the school. I helplessly reported our failure to turn up the diadem. Harry had larger concerns.

"Tom's coming," he said. "He knows all his other horcruxes are gone."

"He checked all his other hiding places already?" asked Hermione nervously.

"How'd he get at the one in Gringotts?" asked Ron. "We saw the security on that vault."

"The Imperius and killing curses," replied Harry. "He killed all the goblins htat tried to stop him and used the Imperius on one to make him open the vault."

"That'd do it," said Sloth darkly.

"It gets worse," said Harry. "Remember the blind dragon they were using for security? He put the Imperius curse on it and is flying it to Hogwarts."

"That's bad," said Ron. "Castles are made to protect against enemies on the ground. Hogwarts can be as effectively defended as it is using wards that limit flying enchantments."

"How do you know that?" asked Neville, impressed.

"It was in Hogwarts: A History," replied Ron, eliciting a smile from Hermione.

"If it's blind, the basilisk won't be any help," noted Luna.

"Can we even the playing field with Norberta?" asked Ginny.

"I like that idea," I said. "Tom gave Hagrid her egg in the first place. That coming back to bite him would be appropriate."

"He's about an hour's dragon flight away," reported Harry. "Can we find the Diadem by then?"

"Dumbledore's talking to the merpeople and Hagrid's seeing if the centaurs or acromantula know anything," said Hermione. "The ghosts are going through the walls again, but it's not looking good."

"What about the house elves?" asked Harry. "They know this school inside and out, so well we didn't even know they were here cleaning up after us for years. Dobby!"

With a loud crack, Dobby the house elf materialized in front of us. His mismatched outfit had grown to include a scarf several sizes too big for him, and a set of shield hat, cloak, and gloves in case the fighting penetrated the castle walls.

"Harry Potter! How can Dobby be of service to you?" he bowed low to Harry.

"Dobby, this is important," said Harry. "I need you to think hard. Ask the other house elves if you have to. Is there someplace in Hogwarts you could hide something and even Dumbledore wouldn't have been able to find it?"

"You need to see the Room of Hidden Things," said Dobby, ecstatic to be of help. "It is one of the forms taken by the Room of Requirement. We house elves have been using it as an extra kitchen to accommodate our guests, but Dobby can get them out so it can become the Room of Hidden Things for Harry Potter."

As Dobby explained, the Room of Requirement was a room that only existed in the castle some of the time. When summoned by pacing past the place where its entrance would appear three times with a firm intention in mind, the room would open, furnished and appointed for your needs. There were limitations. Only one room existed, so it could only take on one form at a time. It also couldn't be used to create food, because food was one of the five principal exceptions to Gamps law of elemental transfiguration.

Ginny split off from the group to let Charlie and Hagrid know about the dragon and help them get Norberta ready to fight it. Dobby led the rest of us through the halls to the location of the Room of Requirement. After kicking the rest of the Hogwarts staff of hosue elves out of the room, Dobby closed his eyes in concentration and paced the corridor until a door appeared. Throwing open the door, we gazed upon the Room of Hidden Things.

Hogwarts was a thousand years old, and nothing demonstrated that more clearly than the mounds of broken furniture, ugly dress robes, taxidermied creatures, and various other random objects filling the cathedral sized room to the ceiling in places. Each object here had been hidden by someone in the school's long history. It was a treasure trove of archeological knowledge, and I resented Voldemort more than ever for what we now had to do to it.

"I'll get as many muggles as I can to help us sort through all this," I said. "Hermione, I need undetectable extension charms on a bunch of bins. We'll need to have someplace to toss all the objects that aren't the horcrux. Dobby, get the other house elves back in here and helping us look. Everyone else, get started. We don't have much time before Tom gets here."

The sheer number of people under the castle's protection allowed us to chew through the thousand years worth of sediment faster than I would have believed possible. Luna had enlarged a picture of the diadem and stuck it to the wall to remind everyone what they were looking for. In less than half an hour, the diadem had been found by the Grangers.

As Sloth sprinted off to the Chamber of Secrets to destroy the Diadem, Harry swallowed hard and walked out of the Room of Requirement, looking pale. There was one horcrux left before Voldemort could be put down for good, and now that the time had come, Harry was hesitant. He had every right to be afraid. It was only Dumbledore's guess that he'd be able to come back, lucky as his guesses may be.

"Do you still want to do this?" I asked after following him to an empty corridor.

"I don't have a choice, do I?" said Harry, trying to screw up his courage.

"Of course you've got a choice," I said. "You say the word and we'll have the basilisk petrify Tom instead, then toss him in a cell in Azkaban, or off a ship in the middle of the ocean."

"His followers'll find him and revive him," said Harry. "It's got to be this way. I... I have to die. If I don't... if I don't come back-"

"You will," I said firmly. "Even if Dumbledore's wrong about the two way connection, there are so many people who love you, Harry. They'll be competing for who gets to use the Resurrection Stone first."

Harry smiled faintly. "That's right. Thank you, Greed. Now I just need to decide who to do the job."

"You have to mean the Unforgivable curses," I said. "No one in this school can cast the killing curse at you. I think you should use Tom."

"What?" asked Harry.

"I'm thinking tactically," I said. "He hits you square with a killing curse. You drop and he thinks it's over. That leaves you an opening to sneak attack him."

"You have to mean the Unforgivables," repeated Harry. "I'll only get one shot. I don't know if I can cast the killing curse, even at Tom."

"So use a curse you don't have to mean," I suggested. "Tom's defenses will be down, since he'll think you're dead."

"I guess the worst that happens if I fail is he kills me again and I have to wait for you guys to use the Resurrection Stone," said Harry.

"I'm sorry you're in this position," I said.

"I know. Thanks. Now, let's get back to ending this."

* * *

Voldemort didn't launch the attack directly on arriving like we expected. Instead, he landed the blind dragon in the camp the Death Eaters had fallen back to. The hour's flight had let Voldemort clear his head and calm his nerves. Now that he was thinking clearly again, his occlumency barriers were back up and Harry couldn't tell us what was happening inside the camp.

Then, the magically amplified voice of Severus Snape rang out loud and clear. "By order of the Ministry of Magic, surrender the school or it will be burned to the ground with all inside it. This rebellion is over. I give you ten seconds to comply."

"Tom's not leading the fight?" asked Ron.

"Snape's leading the fight and he wants us to know it," said Harry. "Everyone, defensive positions! Stunning hexes only, I want them taken alive! Hold Norberta back unless I give the order!"

Snape flew alongside the pale, blind dragon, unsupported by a broomstick, just like Voldemort had done when we rescued the Dursleys. Apparently, Voldemort had taught his most competent and trusted general this unique bit of magic. A dozen Death Eaters were crowded on the back of the dragon.

A jet of fire roared from the dragon's mouth, but the castle's defenders were ready with flame freezing and water summoning charms. Once Snape and the dragon were directly above the tower, Death Eaters leapt from the dragon's back, down to the tower. Stunners from our forces overwhelmed the attackers with ease, and even Snape was shot out of the sky by a stunner. A cushioning charm by Harry saved Snape from a messy landing on the unyielding stone of the castle.

That left only the dragon itself, and that was where I cam in. I pointed my wand at the creature, and it was suddenly held immobile by a glowing blue aura of solidified air. With a stationary target, a half dozen coordinated stunners hit the dragon and I lowered it gently to the tower where Charlie got to work securing it. Leaving the others to clean up, Harry took Snape to the dungeons personally and directed Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Luna, Sloth, and myself to follow.

Once Snape was shackled, Harry cast a spell to wake him. Blinking quickly, Snape said, "You understood. How long have I been unconscious?"

"A few minutes," said Harry. "What was that about?"

"The Death Eaters from the dragon were ones who wanted to defect," said Snape. "The Dark Lord delegated capturing Hogwarts to me because he is seeking out an artifact of power elsewhere."

"He's going after Grindewald for the Elder Wand," said Harry. "He isn't sure he can beat my wand in a straight fight after what happened at Privet Drive."

"We've got a portkey to Nurmengard ready," I said.

"Okay, there's no rush," said Harry. "We've planned for this. We can take our time and check the Death Eaters we captured. Once we know where they stand for sure, we can head for Nurmengard."

* * *

Author's comments:  
Our heroes didn't offer the muggles shelter because they believed they would need extra manpower to conduct a search. They weren't kind to the house elves because they suspected they had knowledge they would need. They didn't make plans to evacuate the centaurs because they wanted to manipulate them into fighting for them. They did all of these things because they were the right thing to do. Doing good deeds isn't just the right thing to do. It also helps make people more willing and able to help you down the line.


	48. Chapter 64: The War Ends

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 64) The War Ends  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

After checking and rechecking our equipment and running over the plan one last time, the eight of us who'd battled Voldemort to a standstill in the Department of Mysteries used our stolen time turners to go back before Voldemort arrived at the Death Eater camp and traveled to Nurmengard. Once there, we relieved the Order members guarding Grindewald. Their presence would only complicate matters. We entered the old dark lord's cell and waited.

"He's coming, isn't he?" asked Grindewald.

"Don't worry," said Harry. "We aren't going to let him harm you."

"The war's almost over," said Neville.

"Only if we win," I said.

"We'll win," said Hermione.

Ron nodded. "I wouldn't have believed it when all this started. The most powerful dark wizard who ever lived, coming here because he's scared of Harry."

"Scared of all of us," said Harry.

Grindewald laughed.

"We don't have to protect you," noted Sloth. "If you think this is funny..."

"It's not that," wheezed Grindewald. "It's what you called Voldemort. With everything else I failed to accomplish, I couldn't even hold on to that dubious honor."

"Your plan to run the muggles openly was doomed from the start," I told the old wizard. "Magic gives you advantages, but muggles are still human beings, every bit as adaptive and cunning as any wizard. The Statute of Secrecy was never for the protection of the muggles. Once the muggles knew about magic, once they could see it performed every day, sure, they'd be cowed and afraid at first, but once the novelty wore off, they'd study it, learn about it. They'd see the strengths and weaknesses, and they would devise countermeasures. How could you hope to remain in power when even if you got every witch and wizard behind you, you were outnumbered more than ten thousand to one and surrounded?"

"It still needs tightening up before it's ready to put down on your History of Magic NEWT, but it's coming along," said Hermione.

"At least I can be sure Albus wasn't reviewing for his exams before confronting me," said Grindewald.

"No," said Luna. "He was teaching at the time. He was probably grading them."

"It's time," said Sloth, snapping her pocket watch closed. "Cloaks on."

The eight of us disappeared beneath our invisibility cloaks, leaving the room apparently empty except for Grindewald. Moody's eye allowed me to see Voldemort apparating just outside the prison's wards. He strolled purposefully up to the fortress, then rose up into the air. I reminded myself I'd need to ask Snape how that unsupported flight spell worked when this was all over, since it was one of Voldemort's only unique discoveries outside the area of mutilating his own soul.

His black robes billowing, Voldemort looked in through the archery slit of a window. Displaying one of the many modifications he'd made to his body, Voldemort dislocated a number of joints, including some in places humans don't have joints, and contorted his body to squeeze through the window. Vulnerable as he looked in that position, I resisted the temptation to attack. Between Voldemort and Harry, the first one to die wins.

Only when Voldemort was fully inside the room and had taken a step toward Grindewald did Harry throw back his cloak and reveal himself. "Hello, Tom," he said calmly with his wand raised.

"Harry Potter," replied Voldemort. "I did not expect to see you here. Did Dumbledore leave you orders to look after his old friend?"

"He's here because he knew you were coming," said Grindewald with some degree of mirth in his voice. "He used me as bait to get you on your own."

"It was always going to end like this," said Harry. "Neither can live while the other survives."

"You didn't come to face me alone," said Voldemort. "Where are your friends? Your parents? Where is the one who will die in your place today?"

Red, slitted eyes flicked toward the emaciated form of Grindewald where he sat on his bed. Grindewald shrugged. "I just met the boy."

"You're afraid," taunted Harry. "You know I've destroyed your diary, your ring, your locket, your cup, and your snake. You've got no horcruxes left."

A smile drew on the Dark Lord's face and he said, "Your grand quest to unmake me has failed. A horcrux remains you never knew about."

Harry shrugged. "I can look for it after I banish you to the form of a shrieking shade again. There are no Philosopher's Stones left for you to find. Your father's bones are gone. There'll be no coming back for you even if I can't find the last horcrux."

"Escaping me as often as you have has left you arrogant, boy. Tonight you will die and I will display your broken corpse like a standard when my army marches into Hogwarts."

"Are you planning to kill the boy or talk him to death?" asked Grindewald.

"He's afraid," said Harry. "My wand beat his last time we fought. He came here looking for the Elder Wand to replace his. He doesn't realize the wand isn't what's important." Harry holstered his wand and stared down Voldemort.

Cocking his head curiously, Voldemort flicked his wand toward Harry. "Adava Kedavra!" The green bolt struck Harry square in the chest and both Harry and Voldemort collapsed.

"Expelliarmus!" shrieked Ginny, blasting Voldemort's wand from his grasp as she threw off her cloak. Ron caught the wand and stuck it in his wand holster. I pointed my wand at the window and glowing blue stone slid seamlessly into place, sealing the window. Sloth used a similar transmutation to seal the door. Neville put a full body bind on Voldemort. Hermione bound him in summoned ropes. Luna attempted and failed a killing curse.

Without moving a muscle, Voldemort wordlessly countered Neville's binding, vanished Hermione's ropes, and rose into the air. A variety of lethal and disabling curses were deflected by Voldemort. Sloth ignited a glowing blue alchemic sword blade and leapt at him, only to be blocked by his shield spell. I stomped my foot to attempt to impale him with spikes, but he wandlessly transfigured them into knives which flew at us. As we had our homunculus bodies by that point, we just pulled the knives out of our hearts and kept fighting.

"Sectumsempra!" The attack came from the one direction Voldemort wasn't defending against. Our distraction had worked. Harry's curse had severed Voldemort's head from his shoulders. As it had with Quirrell, Voldemort's shade rose from his body and flew through the nearest wall.

"I could have sworn you were playing him about not having found his last horcrux," said Grindewald.

"I was," said Harry. "He doesn't know it, but he's on borrowed time."

"We should get back to Hogwarts," said Ron. "He'll be heading for the Death Eater camp outside."

* * *

When our portkey arrived back at Hogwarts, a platoon of goblins dressed in silver armor were waiting just outside the castle gates. Apparently, Voldemort's actions at Gringotts had pushed their neutrality to the breaking point, and they'd come with an offer of alliance against the common threat. Harry agreed immediately, told them the final battle was just about to start, and we set to work organizing our forces for what we suspected was coming.

The underclassmen were evacuated to the panic room Salazar Slytherin had left us called the Chamber of Secrets. Everyone willing and able to fight was armed and put in position. Scrimgeour knew he wasn't in charge anymore when Harry represented the wizards in an impromptu war council with the centaur, goblin, and acromantula leaders. Everything was ready by the time Voldemort's shade arrived and sent his followers in to make a final attack to try to take the school. He still thought his last horcrux was inside.

Fawks the phoenix sang out, bolstering our side and demoralizing the charging Death Eaters and their allies. Silencing charms from the Death Eaters stopped both the phoenix song and the mandrake based attacks from harming their side. Using coordinated charms, a number of our wizards lifted a stream of water from the lake and caused it to rain down on the Death Eaters. As the water flowed, one of the goblins worked a spell to transform the water into the Thieves Downfall, and wash away the Imperius curse on the unfortunates the Death Eaters had forcibly conscripted. The newly freed individuals immediately broke ranks and fled the battle.

Now facing only giants, dementors, inferi, and witches and wizards who served Voldemort willingly, our forces could stop holding back. The front gates of Hogwarts flew open and the Serpent of Slytherin emerged, still wearing its goggles and pink earmuffs. Any Death Eater stupid enough to try to launch a killing curse in its direction was petrified by its gaze before the first word of the spell left their lips.

Acromantula swarmed down the castle walls, covered by centaur archers. The goblins marched in formation with the animated suits of armor who followed the basilisk out the front gates. Hagrid and Charlie each directed a dragon toward the attacking giants.

I popped Moody's magic eye out of my socket and tossed it to Sloth. She popped it into her socket, then did a swan dive off the highest tower in the castle, disappearing beneath the ground without a ripple. Protected by earth which the eye allowed her to see through, Sloth began attacking from below, and Inferi began vanishing beneath the ground.

Loki transformed and I leapt into the fray alongside him. I snapped my fingers and burned a group of inferi to ashes while Loki tore into a group of werewolves who stuck with Voldemort to lash out at the world rather than accept Lupin's promise of a cure and a normal life. A giant's fist crashed down on my head. Using an array on my shoulder blade, I mimicked Sloth's powers, and remained unmoved while the giant drew back a bloody stump.

Patronuses danced among the combatants, keeping the dementors at a distance. Even as the clean lines of battle were broken, the luminous silver spirits of hope served as markers to let us know here our friends and allies were.

The outcome of the battle was never in question. Though Voldemort had gathered every dark creature and wizard that would follow him, the alliance standing against him was superior in numbers, skill, and resolve. The only real question was how many the light side would lose before the Death Eaters realized it themselves. I was determined to keep that number as low as possible. I concentrated my efforts on the nonhumans, since humans were revivable.

The goblins in indestructible armor carving their way through inferi didn't need my help. The acromantula swarming a pair of giants, on the other hand, did. I donned the Ultimate Shield as I sprinted at the enormous humanoids. I was almost unnoticed as I reached on giant's foot, clapped, and touched it. The coarse material of the creature's clothing unwove itself and rewove into a set of carbon hardened ropes that bound it hand and foot. The spiders swarming up its body leapt to safety as it toppled.

The second giant was hit with a dozen red stunning bolts fired by the muggles from the castle windows. Giant skin may be highly resistant to magic, but alchemy worked on different principals, and that's what powered the weapons the muggles were using. I joined the acromantula in charging a group of enemy wizards as the second giant fell.

Green bolts of light flew at my party, so I stomped and raised a short wall to block the killing curses. It didn't meaningfully slow us down as Loki, myself, and the acromantula could all easily clear the wall in a single bound. A killing curse hit me on my way over, and by the time I'd regenerated back to life, Loki was standing in a pile of dismembered Death Eater corpses and the acromantula were moving on.

New battle lines had formed as the Death Eater side was reduced to a handful of pockets of resistance surrounded by alliance fighters. From one of those pockets of resistance came a pair of killing curses that shot both dragons out of the sky. I made a b-line for that group, leaping over the corpses of dead goblins and wizards as I went. I arrived in time to see a goblin stab a Death Eater in the chest with a sword, only for a dark mist to rise off the corpse and posess the nearest Death Eater, who hurled an Adava Kedavra at the goblin.

"Harry already killed you, Tom!" I yelled, drawing the attention of the hateful shade possessing whatever body he could get. "The diadem you hid in the Room of Requirement is destroyed too. You're out of horcruxes. You just don't know it yet."

I brought up a wall with the array on my shoe to block his killing curse. When I lowered the wall, my pocket watch was out and opened. I kept my eyes on the watch as I stomped and impaled every Death Eater in the cluster with stone spikes. Voldemort's shade angrily rushed at me. Just before it reached me, I snapped my watch shut, looked him in the eye, and said, "Disappear."

At the same instant, the Harry in the dungeon below Hogwarts who was still a horcrux used his time turner to beat Voldemort to Nurmengard. Deprived of his final connection to the mortal world, the restless shade of Lord Voldemort evaporated into nothing.

* * *

While we mopped up the last of the enemy forces, I made sure to bind the thousands of dementors in chains so they couldn't flee. Once Sloth emerged from beneath the ground, I used those chains to pull the dementors beneath the earth and leave them to starve. The wizarding world wasn't going back to using them as prison guards.

Speaking of prison, while the hardest of his hard core died with him, many of Voldemort's followers fled or surrendered. Scrimgeour, now properly reinstated as Minister of Magic, began the process of putting them on trial. At Harry's insistence, they were fair trials. The lesson of Sirius Black was thoroughly learned by the wizarding legal system.

With the war over, the refugees could finally go home, and the school got back to normal. McGonagall even scheduled a compressed Quidditch season in the time we had left in the year. Snape and Dumbledore didn't return to their old positions. Dumbledore enthusiastically joined Ron's alchemy class as a student, and Snape retired to write textbooks.

"It's strange to see my name on that," said Sloth, indicating the Order of Merlin, First Class in the school's trophy case.

"It shouldn't be strange," I said. "You're a hero."

"Fighting Voldemort wasn't a choice," said Sloth. "Anyone would have. Doing what anyone sane would do doesn't make you a hero."

"It didn't look like a choice because you have a good heart," I said. "A lot of people just hid or ran away. We could've abandoned this world at any time. Voldemort and his people never could have found us."

We stood side by side for a long moment, Sloth's eyes still on the award. Finally, I said, "When Fawks sang at the start of the battle, how did it make you feel?"

"Safe," she said absentmindedly. "Protected. Like everything was going to work out. But that's just what phoenix song does."

"Not if you're evil," I said.

"I know I'm not evil," said Sloth, surprised. "That's why not being able to fix what she did bothers me. I've already saved a lot more people than she killed, but it isn't like a life saved cancels out a life taken, you know."

"Yeah, I get it," I said. "I just hope you remember it works the other way around too. The lives she took don't cancel out the lives you've saved either."

Sloth took my hand and squeezed it, then said, "Come on. If we hang out here much longer, we'll need to use time turners to get to Divination on time."

* * *

Author's comments:  
With Voldemort dead, there are a few personal things left to resolve before our heroes return to their own world.


	49. Chapter 65: The Meaning of Victory

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 65) The Meaning of Victory  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

By December, the school was basically back to normal. Though it hadn't turned out to be particularly important in the war, the eight of us continued with our fencing lessons out of pure interest. Hermione had us taking practice NEWTs to check our weak spots, overruling any objections about how time consuming they were by reminding us we were all immortal and had time turners. Based on the results of the practice tests, I was where I needed to be, except for those spells, mostly in Charms, that couldn't be duplicated with alchemy.

The day before the Christmas holiday was set to start, an owl unexpectedly dropped a letter in front of me at the breakfast table. It was from the Ministry of Magic.

"What's that about?" asked Luna when I finished reading.

"I'm being summoned to Azkaban," I said. "Apparently, Lucius Malfoy is dying."

"I don't know a lot about alchemy," said Luna, "but I thought those blood seals were an all or nothing thing."

"They are," I said. "The guards think he's faking, but they're calling me in just to make sure."

"You'll want to go right away," said an instance of me from the future who'd just walked in with a future Sloth. "Trust me, this is going to be interesting."

With that recommendation, I met the present Sloth already stepping out the door from the Great Hall and the two of us used the Gate to travel to the bleak island prison of Azkaban. The great stone fortress, though emptied of dementors, still exuded an indefinable chill. I took the opportunity to take the Mad Eye out of my bag, pop it into my socket, and verify the condition of the prisoners.

Kingsley Shacklebolt greeted Sloth and I shaking our hands. "Hello. Thank you for coming."

"Congratulations on your promotion," said Sloth. "Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

"Mostly it means a lot more paperwork and a lot less excitement," demurred Shacklebolt.

"So, can you give me any more details?" I asked.

We walked and talked as Kingsley led Sloth and I into the prison, through the halls and up several flights of stairs.

"The guards say he's been complaining of hunger ever since we took custody of him. We tried feeding him, but he's an empty suit of armor, so it didn't really accomplish anything. It's only in the last week that he's started losing consciousness."

"How can you tell?" asked Sloth.

"The glowing red eye lights go out and he stops responding. He's been progressively less active, but we've got no real way to tell if he's feigning."

"If he's feigning, he's smarter than I ever gave him credit for," I said. "One of the things I learned only very recently is that homunculi made from wizards get hungry while ones made from muggles don't. The possibility that whatever part of him needs food to fuel his magic is starving to death without a body that can eat is very real. It's taken longer than I would have expected, but since he'd have only the caloric needs added on by his magic, and not the baseline ones from maintaining his human body, who knows?"

Shacklebolt led us into a cell where a black suit of armor laid on a shelf-like bunk covered up to its waist in a blanket. Draco was standing in a corner, looking down at his father while Narcissa sat at his bedside, clasping his gauntlet in her hands.

"You're here to help my father, aren't you?" asked Draco as we entered the cell. "You did this to him! You can fix it!"

"Is he awake?" I asked.

"I am," came the weak voice of Lucius Malfoy from the helmet.

"You are going to die," I told Lucius. "You ensured that fact when you tried to kill Ginny Weasley with the diary. I could make you immortal, but I won't."

"So, did you just com here to gloat?" demanded Draco.

"No," I said. "I came here to give him a choice. There are three ways you can die, Lucius. The first is I walk right back out that door and you starve, however long that takes. I admit, I'm curious how long that will be.

"Your second option, I could break your blood seal, end your suffering in an instant, and at least you'll know you'll be lucid in the end."

"And the third?" asked Lucius.

"The cruelest, most drawn out option of them all," I said. "Old age."

"You can make him human again?" asked Draco hopefully.

"I could," I admitted. "I won't. There's a price to that one you can't afford."

"So what are you talking about?" asked Sloth.

"A homunculus that can age like a human is doable," I said. "Dante made one, and Izumi got it on her first try. It's trickier, but I've made more homunculi than both of them combined."

"What's the catch?" asked Lucius, his eye lights narrowing.

"Well, it's painful," I said, "putting you in a new body. It also means that, unless Voldemort shared some important secrets with you or you successfully appeal to Ron Weasley, the man who's baby sister you tried to kill, you'll only be able to die of old age."

"And that's bad?" asked Lucius, confused.

"It might be," I said with a shrug. "No way of knowing how decrepit you'll get before the end. Of course, I suppose you'll have the option of going back to starvation in the end."

"More time with my family and the ability to feel my wife's hand on mine again," said Lucius. "That isn't a choice. Do it."

Once in his new body, Lucius ate like a starving man, hugged his wife and son, and greeted the rest of his life sentence in Azkaban with a level of enthusiasm only someone who'd spent months in that sensory deprived armor form could truly appreciate. I wasn't sure I could have lasted as long as he did without going insane.

"The question is," I said to Sloth as we used our time turners to get back to breakfast, "if you can starve without a body, why doesn't it happen to ghosts?"

"Well, we know ghosts aren't as simple as just being souls without bodies," said Sloth. "They have substance that can interact with liquids and gasses. Muggles don't leave ghosts. There's an element of choice involved. I think those transparent bodies we see are actually bodies. Cosmetically similar to their originals, but able to feed off some sort of energy as common as air that bodies made of matter can't metabolize."

"The substance they make their bodies out of and feed off must be rarer or nonexistent in other worlds, just like some worlds don't have any ambient energy to fuel alchemy," I mused. "Assuming there isn't some conspiracy like the Ministry of Magic back home covering things up, that would explain the lack of verifiable ghost sightings in Amestris."

* * *

Sloth and I spent the Christmas holiday at the Burrow along with Harry. The Grangers, Lovegoods, and Longbottoms dropped by at various points to offer well wishes and exchange baked goods. People being able to just stop by was a peculiar thing in itself with how long the Weasleys' home had been blanketed with every security precaution short of the fidelius charm. Even more notably, Mrs. Weasley didn't feel the need to glance at the clock showing the locations and statuses of her family members every few minutes.

As our present to the Potters, Sloth and I snuck out using time turners to establish an alibi and traveled to Godric's Hollow. There, we used alchemy to repair and rebuild the ruined house where Harry had gotten his scar years ago. On the table, where they were sure to find it, we left a muggle newspaper. Outlined in black marker was an article about Vernon and Petunia Dursley being arrested for child abuse. With Voldemort gone, there was no longer any reason to let them get away with what they'd done to Harry for eleven years.

Duddley sent a card by owl post. He'd borrowed the owl from Pansy Parkenson, who he'd started dating during the siege. There wasn't much to the card, but it was a gesture, and Harry'd have to decide where to take things from here.

Between all our friends in this world, Sloth and I received a full library's worth of books, seeds for every magical plant known to wizardkind, a large stock of wands, and enough supplies and ingredients to run a magic school like Hogwarts for a full year. It was a Christmas present from this world to ours. Undetectable extension charms would make it possible for Sloth and I to carry this bounty back through the Gate.

The supplies for our new magic school brought on discussion of what everyone was going to do after graduation. Harry'd been inundated with offers from every Ministry of Magic department there was, and he was holding off on making a decision. He'd been considering a career as an Auror, mostly for the benefit of the backup and extra combat training while Voldemort was still after him. Now that Voldemort was gone, he was giving serious thought to teaching. He'd both enjoyed and been good at it during his time with the DA.

Sloth and I continued to work out wedding plans for after graduation. Molly Weasley tried to help, but her children ensured she didn't end up dominating the planning. The guest list, while kept exclusive to the people we'd met and come to care about in this world, was still enough that we ended up accepting Molly's invitation to hold the ceremony at the Burrow.

* * *

With the Christmas holiday of our final year over, studying for the NETWs was kicked into high gear. With my utterly unreasonable course load, I was in class, doing homework, or studying forty eight hours a day. In my free time, in addition to the usual extra curicular activities, I joined the others in re-teaching parseltongue to Harry, who'd lost his instinctive knowledge of the language along with that fragment of Voldemort's soul.

I didn't make any new breakthroughs emulating advanced charms, but I did manage a passable approximation of fiendfyre in Defense. The red stones I was burning through on conjuration in transfiguration class were still not running out.

Out of concern I might not be allowed to use red stones on the NEWT practical, I applied the Thule array to my arm that allowed access to the red stone energy inside my body. Then I went ahead and ate, along with Sloth, the large stock of excess red stones we'd accumulated.

I was still giving regular checkups to Tonks as her baby developed. He looked healthy as he went into the final weeks of the pregnancy. The original Nina had helped preside over a birth, so Sloth offered what she knew about what to expect. As no one was quite sure what would happen when the umbilical cord was cut, Lupin and Tonks wanted us at St. Mungo's when the day came.

Precautions were wise, but as it turned out, unnecessary. Ted Tonks came into the world safe, healthy, and as far as I could tell, completely human. It was a remarkable thing. The amount of energy a single human life could produce when turned into a red stone was sufficient to fill a train car with gold created ex nihilo. Actually creating a human life using a Philosopher's Stone exhausted the power of a good sized Stone. And yet, here were were, witnessing a life come into existence all on its own. It was a humbling reminder of how big, and mysterious, and beautiful the world could be.

Both parents were overjoyed and proud. They hugged, and kissed, and cuddled their son. Pictures were taken, wine bottles were opened, and congratulations were offered all around.

"You know, when Nina fist saw a baby being born, she panicked," said Sloth as we made our way back to school. "She thought the mother was going to die. Ed and Al were there, and they weren't helping at all. They didn't know what they were doing any more than Nina did."

She smiled at the memory.

"I assume she didn't die," I said.

"Not only did she not die, but she was giving orders the whole way. I think she was the only one there who knew what to do."

"It's really something," I said. "Magic and alchemy needing such huge productions if they can manage it at all, but you just let nature take its course and a brand new life just appears."

"It's comforting to know I could have a child," said Sloth. "I'm not ready to raise one, but knowing that being a homunculus doesn't prevent it is nice, you know?"

"Agreed," I said.

* * *

I wasn't the only one buried in schoolwork. I was just the only one using a time turner to dig my way through it all. I studied with the others on those subjects we were taking together, since, other than fencing and parseltongue lessons, those were the only times we saw each other.

Plenty of students who'd faced down the Death Eaters were starting to crack from the pressure of the upcoming NEWTs. As I had during the OWL year, I brewed some potions to calm nerves, induce restful sleep, and sharpen wits and memory. With all that I'd learned since then, my potions were even more effective.

"You won't pass your Charms NEWT, Marcus. You know that," said Professor Flitwick after class one day. "Your theory is flawless, your wand work and pronunciation are spot on, but too many of your spells just don't work."

"I know," I said. "It's a small miracle I've gotten as far as I have without having real magic."

"Why would you take a test you know you'll fail?" asked Flitwick.

"My name is Greed, but that doesn't mean I don't also have pride. Right up until the end, I might come up with a solution. And even if I don't, I want to know how close I could get. Charms has been my biggest challenge since coming to Hogwarts. It wouldn't feel right not seeing it through."

* * *

One day blended into the next as our classes shifted from covering new material into a thorough review after the Easter holidays. That sense was not helped by the constant time turning, lack of sleep, and irregular meals. If I didn't have Hermione's homework planner, I wouldn't have realized the year was nearly over.

As with the OWLs, the Ministry of Magic sent a group of witches and wizards to administer the NEWT. The tests themselves were longer and more grueling than the OWLs, covering still more advanced material. Multiple long essays had to be penned in each exam room, and the practical portion of each test too up a full day apiece. Each subject's NEWT was like the State Alchemy Exam, covering so much material, I was sure I could recreate every spell and magical theory I'd learned in Hogwarts using just the exam papers.

As I finished each test, I actively let go of the built up pressure it represented. Because of the relatively fewer students taking the NEWT, the results would be handed back to us by the end of term feast. There wouldn't be the weeks of waiting like there had been with the OWLs.

Lacking any immediate worries by the time the last NEWT was finished, the sudden relief from all pressure and responsibility was disorienting. After seven years of closing out the school year with a battle with dark wizards, we found we weren't quite sure how to end a year after the ware was definitively over.

"It's strange, thinking we won't be coming back here next year," said Harry as we relaxed by the lake.

"There's nothing stopping us from coming to see Luna and Ginny graduate next year," offered Ron.

"It's just not the same," said Harry.

"You know," I said, "I'm pretty sure Sirius only took the Defense job because the plan was to hole up in the castle anyway. I also figure it won't take much convincing to get McGonagall to turn Alchemy into a proper elective."

"And Professor Slughorn only came out of retirement because Hogwarts offered protection from Voldemort," mused Hermione.

"I'll be sure to come by and visit," promised Neville. "I think I'm going to take Kingsley up on his offer to be an Auror."

"We'll come and visit too," promised Sloth. "I don't know what the next world we visit will be like, but we'll tell you all about it."

"When are you leaving?" asked Harry.

"Right after the wedding," I said.

"We'll still have our time turners, so we'll be back for Ginny and Luna's graduation," added Sloth.

* * *

My NEWT scores were all I could have hoped for. Eleven O's and a single P in Charms. It was the highest possible failing grade. Sloth passed all her NEWTs.

The end of the year feast was full of excitement and good cheer. It was the last house elf made feast I would enjoy for a long while. The House Cup was successfully claimed by Slytherin this year, partly by us insisting we not get House points for killing Voldemort, and partly for all their efforts to make the muggles feel welcome during the siege.

After the feast, the rest of the students left for the train, but we graduating NEWT students stayed behind. Our heads of house gathered us at the Black Lake, and summoned the enchanted boats we had rode into the school in our first year. At McGonagall's direction, we stepped back into the boats. Loki hopped nimbly in with Sloth and I. Then, using our own powers, we guided the boats across the lake.

We decided to ride the Hogwarts Express back to London. There was no hurry, and this would be our last chance to ride the train. The next step couldn't begin until all the students were home anyway.

* * *

Sloth, Loki, and I stayed at the Burrow for one last night. The decorations they had prepared were every bit as gorgeous as they'd put up for Bill and Fleur.

"Thank you so much for all this," I said to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.

"Don't be silly," said Mrs. Weasley. "You're family."

Touched beyond words, we hugged the two of them in a group hug.

Fred and George made sure that our preferred dress code of no dress code was enforced. We wanted our guests to look like themselves at the wedding. Sloth and I would be the only ones dressing up.

Our guest list included DA members, Order of the Phoenix members, Hogwarts teachers, the whole of the immediate Weasley family, some nonhuman magical creatures like Dobby, and my fellow Triwizard champions.

I stood beneath an arch wearing my blue Amestrian military uniform and my black haired, purple eyed homunculus form. The gathered guests turned to look when Sloth marched down the center isle. She was also in her true form. Small, pale, and with her black hair in twin braids. Sloth carried a bouquet of bright yellow flowers. Her dress was a simple white sleeveless gown, and she wore a circlet of transmuted flowers.

Sloth ascended a set of raised steps when she reached the arch so we would be able to stand eye to eye without shape shifting. There were no rings. Trinkets of gold, worthless to alchemists, felt like they would cheapen the event. We exchanged nothing more and nothing less than our heartfelt expressions of love for one another, and our vows to honor and care for one another in good times and bad, for the rest of our lives.

When we kissed to seal our vows, it was to a round of enthusiastic applause. Harry once wondered if the Mirror of Erised showed the future. It didn't. But that didn't mean you couldn't get very close indeed.

After much dining and dancing, with many congratulations and well wishes, Sloth and I took our bags, called Loki, and bid our guests goodbye. I lifted Sloth into a proper bridal carry. She clapped her hands and a sophisticated, blue transmutation circle appeared above our heads, swept down over us, and deposited us safely before the Gate.

* * *

I was worried we'd gone off course when the Gate deposited Sloth, Loki, and I in a round, stone room with a transmutation circle on the floor and doors covering the walls. Then I looked up and saw a sign reading, "Welcome to Liore. The current time is:" Directly below the flashing letters painted in on the stone wall was a clock showing hours, minutes and seconds, as well as day, month, and year. We were three years late for our meeting with Ed, Al, and Winry.

Sloth and I took our pocket watches, wrapped their chains around ourselves and Loki, and twisted the dials to send ourselves back in time. We appeared in a flash in the central square in Liore, near the fountain. People started and stumbled back when we appeared. No one stopped us as we made our way to Rose's office.

"Greed! Sloth! It's good to see you," said Rose. Loki let out a whuff, prompting her to add, "And of course, you too, Loki."

"Hi, Rose," I said to the mayor of my home town. "It's been a long time."

"You only left a week ago," said Rose, confused.

"It's been longer for us," said Sloth. "We have a lot to talk about. Is Noah still here?"

"She is," said Rose, sending someone to retrieve the woman I now suspected was an untrained witch with a knack for legilimency.

Once Noah arrived, and we exchanged greetings, Sloth and I launched into our tale, showing off magical objects we'd brought with us to bolster our story and to serve as visual aids. Rose was quick on the uptake, asking if we'd brought back books on magic so a school could be started in Liore before we'd even gotten to Voldemort and his attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stones.

At our insistence, Noah went through each of the wands we'd brought and waved them until one let out a stream of red sparks. She stared at the wand while Sloth and I continued our story. When we'd finished, ending with the room we'd arrived in three years in the future with a sign charmed to flash different colors, Rose was already writing down a list of things that needed to be done.

"What you've learned about automating red stone manufacture alone will change everything around here," said Rose. "Having the only magic school in the country here on top of that will do so much for our security and economy."

"I never thought there would be so much more to my powers," said Noah.

"If you need anything from us, advice, temporary instruction work to fill in anything not clear from our notes or textbooks, don't hesitate to ask," I said. "We'll leave the books and notes and wands and seeds with you."

"You're leaving already?" asked Rose.

"First thing tomorrow," I said. "We have an appointment in Risenbool to keep."

* * *

Author's comments:  
From the start, the goal had been to go out, explore new worlds, and return to tell the tale. Now our heroes have another world's worth of friends to keep informed of their future journeys, and to share the knowledge they discover with.


	50. Chapter 67: Keeping an Appointment

The Iron Sole Alchemist Goes to Hogwarts (Chapter 67) Keeping an Appointment  
by Howlin  
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)

* * *

Sloth, Loki, and I strolled leisurely up the country road to Rockbell Automail. Edward and Alphonse were outside doing chores when we came into view. Sloth and Loki broke into a run as Ed and Al both raised a hand in greeting. I kept to a casual stroll, smiling at Sloth's enthusiasm.

Alphonse was tackled to the ground by the hug Sloth gave him at the end of a flying leap. Wanting to be part of the moment, Loki tackled Edward and licked his face before moving off to find Den, the Rockbell family dog with an automail foreleg. Everyone was standing back up when I made it up to the house.

"So, the Stone did let you control the time difference," said Edward. "You're right on time."

"Actually, the Stone was destroyed," I said. "We found another way to solve the time difference."

"We've seen so much," said Sloth. "I can't wait to tell you all about it."

"I'll get Winry and Aunt Pinako," said Alphonse. "I'm sure they'll want to hear everything too."

Edward was visibly jealous when we described the wizarding world. It was filled with so many more possibilities and opportunities than the world he'd been trapped in. Winry was smug about yet another world where automail had never developed. As this was becoming a trend, I asked for a few introductory books on the subject in case the knowledge would come in handy later.

The idea of dark lords was as baffling to them as it had been to us. How Voldemort managed to gather so many willing converts to his cause looked a lot like a failure of governance rather than any charismatic quality he may have once had.

The ghosts, the Resurrection Stone, and related concepts were hard for the Elric brothers to swallow. They'd transgressed the boundaries between life and death. Both brothers had died, and their experiences didn't match at all with what the Potters and the beneficiaries of the Resurrection Stone's power reported.

"We spent a lot of time asking the same questions," said Sloth. "The best theory we have is that different worlds have different afterlives."

"The existence of some sort of afterlife seems to be a certainty just based on what we know about souls and the ability to interact with them after death," I said. "You're both proof of that. I'm thinking the details of that afterlife must vary from world to world."

"The Resurrection Stone was designed to work with the afterlife of that world," said Sloth. "It's why we didn't ask to borrow it when we came back here."

"It figures an easy resurrection method like that wouldn't work here," said Edward.

"Still, it's strange that it works anywhere," said Alphonse.

"You two have the most warped concept of 'easy'," said Winry.

"Well, once we've got some local wizards trained up and investigating using their powers, a lot of doors are bound to open," I said.

"I guess we'd better start studying or we're going to be left behind, right Al?" asked Edward.

"Right," said Alphonse, nodding.

"There is one more thing," said Sloth, pulling a stack of wizard photographs out of her bag. "We both wanted you there for it, but Gate travel being what it is..."

"What are these?" asked Al.

"Our wedding photos," I said, putting an arm around Sloth.

We'd covered the tale of our fight against Voldemort in a few hours. It was barely lunchtime when we'd finished. Going through the wedding photos lasted well into the night, with us fondly sharing memories of our friends from the other world and getting a whole new round of congratulations and well wishes. Alphonse giving his blessing on our union was an especially significant thing as far as Sloth and I were concerned, since he was the closest thing to a father Sloth had. He blushed when we told him so.

"So, what are you two going to do now?" asked Edward. "Stick around Liore and teach?"

"Russel and Fletcher can handle the cultivation of the seeds we brought," I said. "It'll take quite a while before Noah reaches the limit of what our textbooks and notes can teach her. Really, the only thing that needs doing is finding out if any magical creatures are around in this world to use for potions ingredients or wand cores."

"We were actually hoping you'd be interested in that part," said Sloth, taking a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them out of her bag and handing it to the Elrics.

"You're going to keep traveling?" asked Winry.

"After the wonders of seeing real life wizards, the horrors of dementors, and everything we've learned about our powers and the world, I don't think I could stand not knowing what the next world holds," I said.

"And who knows," said Sloth. "Maybe the next world will be so advanced they can do things even the wizards called impossible."

* * *

Author's comments:  
It's been a lot of fun writing my way through a full seven years of Hogwarts education with a pair of strangers from another world who's powers don't quite match up with everyone else's. The time they've spent at Hogwarts has not just won them friends, but has given them tools and skills that will be of immeasurable value in their journeys ahead to worlds more wonderful and terrible than anything they've seen yet.


End file.
